


Favoured

by ChloeWeird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Kidnapping, M/M, Nightmares, Not Canon Compliant, Slow Burn, Werewolf Courting, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-20 12:18:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6005581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChloeWeird/pseuds/ChloeWeird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Stiles is kidnapped and bitten, everyone expects that he’s been turned by the alpha who brutally assaulted him. Instead, he remains human, but he's been marked. Now, they must deal with werewolves from enemy packs who want to make Stiles their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon is vague, but Jackson is gone and Erica and Boyd are not. No alpha pack, but occasional references to possible other supernatural mischief. It doesn’t end up mattering a whole lot.

The video rental place was out of _Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2_. Stiles was pretty pissed about it, since he’d driven all the way to the other side of town to get it. It wasn’t on Netflix, and he didn’t have enough time to find and download a legit version from the internet. They’d just have to watch Pacific Rim again, as Stiles had a hankering to see Derek’s _Are you kidding me?_ face, which was never more hilarious than in the wake of the dumbest awesome movie ever made. 

He had it on his computer so that he could inflict it on his alpha whenever he wanted, but he figured, since he was here, he could pick up some snacks. The betas would finish them in a hot minute, but they’d be tasty while they lasted, and he might even get to eat some himself if he was quick.

He just had to decide whether he wanted Sriracha-flavoured popcorn or classic caramel. Contrary to what the internet assumed, not everyone liked the good old cock sauce, and he might get complaints. On the other hand, he could probably convince Isaac that it was pizza flavoured, and then they’d all be able to laugh at the smoke coming out of his ears. Stiles had fond memories of wasabi peas on the pack night last halloween, and the bright shade of red Isaac’s cheeks had turned. 

He picked up both bags, tucked the two litre bottle of Mountain Dew under his arm and weighed them both in his hands. He closed his eyes and imagined the scenarios that might play out if he put one or the other back, and how he might feel about it. 

“Hey.”

Stiles looked over, taking a step to the side, since he figured he was blocking the popcorn display, but the guy next to him just smiled and went back to perusing the chip rack, barely waiting for Stiles to respond with his own friendly grimace of acknowledgement. Stiles went back to his popcorn, which he really needed to decide on soon. The condensation from the soda bottle was starting to make the sleeve of his over-shirt damp, not to mention cold. 

“Nice night.”

Stiles glanced over again, mild annoyance pricking him at the guy’s apparent compulsion to make small talk. “Yep.”

“It’s warm for autumn, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Be getting colder any day now.”

“Hmm.” Stiles pulled his phone out of his pocket. He juggled the bottle and the bags of popcorn, balancing one on his chest, and started texting for the dual purpose of looking busy to try to fend off more inane comments about the weather, and asking Scott if he was a terrible person for getting the Sriracha. 

“When’s the next full moon? Gotta be soon, right?”

“Yep, couple weeks.” Thursday from next, to be precise. Stiles’ Google Calendar was flawless.

The man laughed, and something about it made the back of Stiles’ neck prick with unease. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

Stiles looked up from his phone, and nailed the guy with a hard look. He wasn’t looking at the chips anymore. He was looking at Stiles, his eyes glued to his face, intense, unnerving and alpha red. 

Behind the alpha, another man stepped into the aisle. He hovered at the end of a row of chocolate bars, silently watching. Seconds later a woman joined him. Stiles let his eyes drift around the store and he counted three more betas staring him down. 

“I hear you know a lot about that sort of thing,” the alpha said. 

“Who told you that?” Stiles said, tonelessly. The bag of popcorn crinkled in his hands under his tightening grip.

“News travels amongst people like us. We hear things.” 

“Things?”

“Word has it that a Hale is alpha in this territory again. That he’s turned a bunch of teenagers and they’re all,” a slow smile curled on the alpha’s face, “hanging out around his old place.” 

He laughed and shared a weird leer with a beta who was lurking by the refrigerators. Stiles suddenly felt like he needed a shower.

“Huh,” Stiles said, shifting his feet. “Is that right?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Sorry, I know about as much as you, so--”

“You misunderstand. You’re going to tell me. Everything.” His eyes glowed red again and his betas flashed theirs in answer. Blue. All of them had blue eyes. Stiles took a step back, but the alpha shot his hand out and captured Stiles’ upper arm in a steel grip.

“Don’t bother,” the alpha said, softly. “Just don’t.” Stiles could feel the prick of claws against his skin and he nodded. Trying to run while surrounded like he was would be stupid. 

Slowly and deliberately, he dumped the popcorn bags back on the shelf and when the alpha let go of his arm, he set the bottle of Dew on the floor. He realized he still had his phone in his hand with a new message to Scott still open on the screen. He had a fleeting thought of sending a distress text to the pack, but the alpha snatched it out of his hands and pocketed it before he could type the first letter of SOS.

The alpha put his hand back on Stiles’ arm, and the closest beta took the other one. They only had to exert a little bit of pressure and Stiles was walking with them, closer to the exit and whatever plans they had for him. 

He tried to make eye contact with the checkout guy as they passed. Stiles didn’t recognize him at all, so he probably went to the catholic high school. That didn’t stop Stiles from attempting to communicate telepathically with him when their eyes met for a brief second. _I’m being kidnapped, you fuckhead_ , he thought desperately, but the kid’s eyes slid away to the screen of his laptop and the alpha gripped the back of his neck in a warning. 

Two beat-up cars waited, headlights on and engines started, in the parking spaces right outside the doors. The ones with the wheelchair signs. Dicks. He sat in the back, in between two of the betas, while the alpha sat in the passenger seat. They were quiet the whole way, though the alpha made a call as the car pulled up outside a sketchy warehouse. He’d started the conversation with a clipped, “Dave here. We’re almost inside.” Stiles didn’t know if being kidnapped by a guy named Dave made him feel better or worse about it. 

Stiles was pulled out of the car roughly, and towed into the big empty building. Circles of yellow light from the fluorescent lamps pooled on the concrete floor in uneven lines, about 8 spots in total. In one of them, there was a table covered with papers and half-full water bottles, in another, a raft of mattresses with no sheets. The one in the middle of the room illuminated a sturdy chair, and Stiles wasn’t surprised to be steered there and tied to the strangely ornate wood. He wondered if a grandma somewhere was rolling in her grave at the horrific misuse of her dining set.

The alpha--Dave--handed Stiles’ phone to one of the two betas who’d tied him up, then gave a piercing whistle. More werewolves emerged from the darkness--Jesus, how many was there?--and they all clustered in a loose circle around the table for a mission report, supposedly.

The two huge betas who’d done the tying up stuck around, one ear each tilted toward the chit chat, and their eyes trained on him. The one who had his phone dropped it to the ground and Stiles could see a new message notification on the screen for half a second before it was crushed under a massive foot. Maybe it’d been Scott, warning him about this enemy pack. More likely, it was one of the pack getting on his case for the lack of movies and snackage. 

Stiles winced at the little pile of bent metal and shattered glass, then thought of what his dad was going to say when he had to buy yet another phone for him before the warranty was up. Then, he was struck by how surreal it was that he was here, tied to a chair, in mortal peril and he was dreading his dad’s Disappointed Face. 

Stiles’ nose started to itch a few minutes later. His hands were still tied, so he tried to see if wrinkling and contorting his face would get rid of it. It didn’t. It just kept itching and prickling and bothering him, until he needed a distraction or he was going to go insane. 

“You guys do your own decorating?” He asked Tweedle-huge and Tweedle-huger. “‘S nice. Very villain chic. Classic, you know? Who needs alarm systems and running water when you’ve got...rats, I guess?”

Neither of the guys even grunted in acknowledgement, and their eyes stayed fixed on him. 

“I also really like what you’ve done with the master bedroom,” he prodded, jerking his head toward the mattress flotilla. He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that they were a mistake, but his tongue continued on without him. “Separate bedrooms--I mean, beds--are so 50s anyway.”

Maybe the hit shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but he hadn’t been ready. The beta’s backhand was brutal and Stiles’ neck hurt from the force almost as much as his cheek did. After that, apparently he was fair game. They didn’t taunt him, or ask him for information. Just took turns slapping him across the face until he could feel his lip splitting and the blood vessels in his skin breaking. 

“Enough.”

The pain was making him a bit stupid, so it took him a second to realize that the alpha was finished with the team meeting. They’d spread out around the warehouse, and in the dim light, Stiles took the time to count them. There were nine of them--plus Dave--that he could see. That didn’t include the most shadowy corners where he couldn’t hope to see with his human eyes and any that were stationed outside. 

Dave dismissed his two lackeys with a wave of his hand and slowed to a stop about 5 feet from Stiles, arms crossed and expression thoughtful. Stiles licked his lips. They were burning hot and the blood had started to go tacky already. It tasted horrible.

“I may have misled you a bit, Stiles,” Dave said, with a fake, regretful frown. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. I know all about your adorable pack. All the precious little betas. A hunter who didn’t have the stomach to kill her puppy dog. Derek Hale, the weak baby alpha. And you,” he closed the distance between them and tipped up Stiles’ chin with his thumb. “The pet human.” 

Stiles jerked his head away, then hissed at the pull on his neck. A part of Stiles was relieved that it didn’t look like he’d be interrogated. Gerard had been a soft touch compared to what these guys were probably capable of, and Stiles had no idea how much pain he could withstand before he sang like a bird, no matter his strong will. The other part of him was more scared than ever. If they didn’t want information, what was he doing here?

Dave sighed and straightened, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’ve got a problem with your alpha, Stiles. Well, not him, specifically, but you know how it goes. Sins of the father and all that. I don’t want to get into it with you, since it was before your time, but the bottom line is, someone’s gotta pay.”

“I get the feeling that someone’s gonna be me,” Stiles said, his voice steadier than he’d expected. 

Dave laughed, and clapped his hands together. “Very good, how clever you are! That’s what everybody says about you, you know. ‘That human who runs with the Hale pack, he’s a smart one. Where would they be without him?’” Dave leaned forward with his hands on his knees, smiling condescendingly. “Do you wanna know what I think, Stiles? 

“Not really, but--”

“I think I know exactly where they’ll be without you.” His voice was soft. Gentle, but clear as a crystal blade. “They’ll be nowhere. Adrift. Devastated by what happened to their defenseless human packmate and crumbling under the weight of their guilt. Because what happened to you will be all. Their. Fault.” He walked his fingers up Stiles’ knee and Stiles’ anger flared at this guy’s fucking _playfulness_.

“That’s bullshit. They know that I chose this life. If I get killed, that’s no one’s fault but mine. And yours, you asshole.”

“Oh, Stiles,” he said, on a laugh. “You’re not going to be killed. You’ll be very much alive. More alive than you’ve ever been. They’ll lose a packmate, alright, but not to death. Just to me.” Dave reached out his hand, sharp nails extended, and ran the backs of his knuckles down the side of Stiles’ face. As Stiles watched, his fangs dropped down into wickedly sharp points and his eyes glowed red like an ember from deep within. He leaned in closer, and whispered, hot breath tickling Stiles’ ear, “and what _fun_ it will be.”

Up until that moment, it had never crossed his mind that that kind of assault was something he should be worried about. It hadn’t been further from his mind when he’d been taken by Gerard. He’d been preparing himself for a beating, and hadn’t been shocked by the warm up he’d goaded the betas into. But if this guy meant to do what Stiles thought he meant to--Stiles’ brain short-circuited for a minute and he could see Dave’s growing smile at what must be a slack-jawed expression, but he found he couldn’t give any other reaction. 

“You really are something, Stiles. I don’t think they appreciated your particular qualities nearly enough in your old pack.” Dave stuck two of his own fingers into his mouth and pulled them out with a slick noise, then took advantage of Stiles’ mind wipe to push them past Stiles’ lips. Stiles gagged and tried to rear back, but there wasn’t any give in the chair or the ropes. The fingers were gone again before he could bite down. “It’s a good thing you’re going to be with me now. I’ll appreciate every part of you, sweetheart.”

Stiles heard a few of the betas laugh, but he was too busy attempting to pull away from Dave’s lips to really get pissed at them. It wasn’t much like a kiss. More of an owning press of an open mouth, with the ghost of suction. When it was over, the cooling saliva on his cheek made him want to throw up.

Dave swiped the back of his hand over his mouth, his fangs fully extended now, and his face beginning to contort into something more lupine. He snapped his fingers at a pack member, who untied the ropes confining Stiles’ quaking limbs. “I’ve been waiting a long time to collect my due from the Hale pack.”

Another beta grabbed a dirty mattress from the other side of the room and pulled it closer to the chair. Dave picked Stiles up by the throat, holding him high enough that his toes barely touched the floor.

There was no more human left in Dave’s voice as he growled, “I’m going to make you feel every wrong they ever did me.” 

The alpha threw him onto the mattress and then all Stiles could see was inky black, cold blue and heart blood red.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles came awake with a gasp. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the yellow light, but he took a couple of breaths and discovered he was still on his side, naked, on the mattress where Dave had left him. His ass was on fire and his back felt like one giant bruise. He could feel the blood seeping from the bite between his shoulder blades, trickling down and drying in itchy trails. 

Stiles hadn’t seen the bite, and probably wouldn’t for a while, but he wanted to cry just from its placement. It wasn’t on his hip like Scott, or his wrist, like Peter had offered. It was ultimate submission. Permanent evidence that he’d been held in place, locked down and mounted like an animal. 

He tried to curl further into himself, in a feeble attempt to try and feel less exposed, but that only made it clear that he hurt everywhere and moving wasn’t something he wanted to be doing. He had no idea where his clothes were, or if they were anything more than tatters. Memories of ripping noises drowned out by Stiles’ own screams suggested that that was unlikely.

Stiles could hear the murmuring back and forth of conversation somewhere in the room, but it was far enough away that he didn’t let it bother him. Instead, he buried his face in the mattress and breathed in the musty gym bag smell of it to mask the scent of blood and semen. He let his mind go blank as best he could, using all the tricks Deaton had showed him in his failed attempt to teach him meditation. 

He couldn’t keep every thought at bay. He thought about why they were letting him just lay there, and not taunting like before, or clearing out before Stiles’ pack could find him. From the snatches of conversation from nearby and what he knew about the body processes of the newly bitten, he could guess that they were waiting to see if he kicked it or got furry. 

He waited for Dave and his betas to decide his fate, his body aching, useless tears caught in a knot in his chest, and thought about how he could be called lucky. He was lucky that only one guy had raped him. Dave could have let any of the betas have a go. He was lucky they hadn’t tortured him for intel on Derek’s pack. Lucky that it hadn’t been his first time, that he’d off-loaded that particular commodity right after he’d turned 18 this summer. God, how _fortunate_ he was. 

He drifted in and out of awareness for a while. He hated that he was sitting there, doing nothing, but he was fully conscious of the fact that there was little he could do. He was injured, surrounded, and stupid from blood loss and shock symptoms. He might be turning, but he sure didn’t feel any werewolf strength coming on that would allow him to fight his way past an alpha and at least nine betas.

His back burned whenever he even thought about moving, and after what seemed like hours of inconsistent consciousness, the fire and ache was joined by a prickle of unease. How long had it been, anyway? He didn’t know how long he’d been out cold, and his sense of timing was shot now, but hadn’t it been enough time for something to change? For _him_ to change?

A beta’s voice floated over to him, clearer than the rest had been. “Dave. We gotta give it up. It’s been almost four hours. The kid isn’t turning. 

“Well, he isn’t dead, either,” Dave snapped. Stiles couldn’t see him from where he was, but he sounded way less sickeningly confident than he had before. “We would know if his body was rejecting the bite. It’s a very quick, unpleasant process.”

“Not yet, but he probably will be soon, if he hasn’t turned by now. He might just bleed out, for all we know.”

They were born wolves, then. They never had a good grasp of what wounds would kill a human. Derek had practically started to plan Stiles’ funeral the first time Stiles had gotten stitches. 

There was a sharp intake of breath, like Dave was going to lay down the law, but before he could, the lights blinked off. It was almost completely pitch black in the warehouse, except for one window, high on the wall, that let in a shaft of moonlight that fell on the table. Stiles’ eyes were drawn there as one of the coffee mugs started to tremble, then exploded, seemingly for no reason. Stiles had just enough time to jam his rubbery fingers in his ears before Lydia’s scream pierced the darkness. 

Stiles would have liked to say that he helped to bust himself out, but it would be an out and out lie. He watched, as his pack burst through the door with earplugs fully engaged and took advantage of the enemy pack’s agonized head-holding and delivered a beat down. When the scream was over, he unplugged his ears and heard the sick crunching of bone and cartilage and the _thunch_ of Allison’s wolfsbane-tipped arrows hitting their mark. 

He definitely heard the moment Scott saw him. He didn’t see it, but he knew when his best friend comprehended his injuries because the howl he sent up was anger and sadness and outrage in their purest form. Scott’s discovery must have alerted the others, because the sounds of the fight grew louder, harsher. 

Stiles felt awareness slipping away again and he didn’t fight it. The last thing he saw before he let the darkness swallow him was Dave’s body falling to the floor across from him, his unseeing eyes open and finally devoid of their hot red stare. 

**

He woke up again and he was floating, though the ride wasn’t as smooth as he would have expected. He opened his eyes, realized he was being carried and his limbs flailed with visceral, electrifying panic.

“Stiles, stop, stop!” It was Derek. Stiles blinked his eyes quickly, trying to clear the haze of pain and exhaustion. He stopped moving, and he realized that his arms were trapped by his side because he was wrapped in Derek’s leather jacket and someone’s hoodie. The restrictive fabric made him itch, but he stayed still because he could see the Camaro in sight. 

Derek opened the passenger door one-handed and settled Stiles in, doing up his seatbelt like he would for a child. Probably just as well. Stiles was too focused on the places his sticky skin adhered to the borrowed clothing to bother with something like lifesaving safety equipment. The car started and they pulled away. Stiles didn’t pay attention to the route. He was cold, but he didn’t ask Derek to turn the air conditioning off, or do it himself. 

He’d made it. He was alive, and being taken away from the people that hurt him. Another foe vanquished, another baddie he’d survived against all odds. Tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime soon, they’d have a pack meeting to discuss what had happened and implement ways to ensure it never happened again. Or, maybe they’d skip that step. It was always Stiles who badgered everybody the day after a boss battle to get them to drag their butts to Derek’s place for a pep talk. He was always the one with a slap on the back and a three-step prevention plan. 

As hard as it was to think about the future beyond getting to his home and his bed and his darkened room, Stiles didn’t think he’d do that, this time. Maybe he’d stop it altogether. He wasn’t sure if it was just different for him, this time, but he couldn’t imagine something he’d rather do less than explain to his friends what had happened, how it had happened and that he was okay. 

His pack didn’t want to hear about how it felt like a part of himself had been taken from him. Something that was essentially Stiles had been perverted the moment Dave’s fangs had pierced his skin. Maybe the gaping hole that had settled in his chest at the same level as the bite on his back was due to being alpha-less. Dave was dead, so he was incomplete without him. Stiles hoped not. He hated the thought of the man who’d carved the hole in the first place being the only one to fill it.

The change would start soon, probably. Or the death part. So, they weren’t out of the woods yet. It was too soon for him to be telling himself he’d been saved. 

“Stiles?”

“Hmm?” He looked over and Derek was staring at him. He peeled his lips apart, and winced at the sting of his split lip reopening. “What?”

“We’re here. At your house.” 

“Oh.” 

Sure enough, he looked out the window and he could see the wide wooden porch on the front of his home. It was late, or very, very early, so the porch light was off, and Mrs. Wilkinson’s TV screen was flickering blue on her white lace curtains. She always fell asleep to late night reruns of CSI: Miami.

A touch on his shoulder made him jump and knock the hand away, then he immediately crumpled with embarrassment and guilt. It was Derek, of course it was. He’d driven Stiles home, let him borrow and possibly ruin his jacket, hadn’t made Stiles talk or anything the whole way. And Stiles repaid him by treating him like a threat. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. 

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not that I think you would do anything. I don’t.”

“I know.”

“You’d never, I know that, I just--”

“I get it,” Derek said, louder, to break into Stiles’ word vomit. “Don’t worry about it.”

Awkward silence ensued, and Stiles reached for his seatbelt. “Okay, well. I’ll see you.”

“Stiles, I’m not leaving,” Derek’s voice was firm, brooking no argument. “We have to monitor you while the change happens. In any case, you shouldn’t be alone right now.”

He was probably right, but that didn’t mean he had to hang around all night. “My dad--”

“He’s almost here. He was on shift, and we didn’t want to call him until we found you. He’s picking up Melissa at the hospital, so he should be home in less than 10 minutes.” 

“Oh. Okay.” Stiles put his hand on the door handle, but didn’t push it open. 

“Do you need help to get inside?” Derek asked, gently. 

“I can walk.” Probably. 

Derek nodded and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You could. Or I could just carry you. It’d be faster and easier.”

Stiles looked out at the lawn that needed cutting and the stone path that led to his front door. It stretched out until it looked as long as a football field. 

“Fine. But I’ll deny it, if anyone asks.”

“Noted.”

As Derek got out and walked around the front of the car, Stiles looked down and was suddenly way too aware of how much of him was in the wind. The jacket wasn’t so bad. He zipped it up and it was huge on him, everywhere except the sleeves, which left 2 inches of his wrists bare, but it covered him down to the waist. The sweater was a different story. It was Boyd’s, Stiles thought, so it was plenty big, but was still an awkward shape and he needed to hold it closed with both hands before his one-man toga party became obscene. 

Derek pulled open the door and Stiles reached for his seatbelt. All the aches that he was able to ignore on the smooth ride home came back, and Stiles hissed when Derek put his arms under his knees and behind his back. 

“Sorry,” Derek mumbled, but he didn’t stop or go slower. He hefted Stiles into his arms and kicked the door closed. They were in the house in moments, and Stiles barely had time to worry if anyone in his quiet neighbourhood was looking out their window. Derek didn’t stop until he brought Stiles to the upstairs bathroom and placed him in the tub. Stiles’ body went rigid and he literally bit his hand against the pain. The leather jacket squeaked against porcelain as his chest and stomach spasmed with his poor attempts at breathing. 

Thankfully, Derek didn’t comment, or try to help in any way. He just grabbed a towel from the shelf over the sink and placed it on the edge of the tub. Cold water splashed down on his feet when Derek turned on the tap, and Stiles gasped and pulled them out of the stream. 

“Jesus. Warn a guy.” 

Derek didn’t say anything, just put the toilet seat down and sat on it. 

“Do you need me to do anything for you?” He asked. This decision was a lot harder to make than the one to let Derek carry him. Getting a free ride indoors was one thing, but asking someone to help you clean off blood and nastier bodily fluids from parts of your body that rarely saw the light? 

“Just...help me get this off.” Stiles sat up slowly and his hands went to the zipper of the jacket. He undid it himself, but Derek had to help him peel the heavy fabric away from his wound and off completely. The lining stuck to the slowly-forming scabs and took them with it. “Thanks,” Stiles said, through gritted teeth. 

Derek nodded then let himself out of the bathroom, but he didn’t go far. Stiles could hear him hovering on the other side of the door. The water was starting to get warmer, so he stuck his feet under the tap as it filled. 

Stiles and his dad didn’t go in for baths very much at all, so they’d never bothered to upgrade the tiny shower/tub combo that came with the house. It had been years since he’d even thought about soaking in a vat of his own filth, so he was surprised to find that his knees felt like they were around his ears. There was no way he was going to get comfortable, so he tried his best to at least get most of his body somewhat submerged. He ended up turning on his side after he’d slung the damp sweater over the side and onto the floor, leaning his head on the slanted wall of the tub. 

The water stung his back as the level rose and he had to fight not to uselessly arch away . Eventually, it filled enough, and he turned off the taps with his foot. The room was quiet, except for the drip of the faucet, and the roaring silence was louder than the filling bath had been. 

Stiles tested the movement of his jaw, and the blood on his chin and lips flaked off and swirled in the water. It made a pretty orange smoke pattern in the water before it dissipated. It was easy to imagine the rest of the filth on his body doing the same thing.

The water wasn’t really that hot to begin with, so it cooled to room temperature quickly. It felt like he was floating again. Suspended. Maybe it was some sort of call back to being in utero or some shit like that, but when Stiles heard his dad’s feet on the stairs, and his hand on the door of the bathroom, he couldn’t hold on to his numbed state anymore. 

“Dad,” he croaked, and his hot tears warmed the tepid water. “Daddy, it hurts.”

“Son.” His dad knelt on the bathmat and ran his hand over Stiles’ sweat damp hair. “Oh, kiddo. It’s alright.”

It wasn’t, though. It could never be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for insect imagery. More details in end notes.

The day after he got home, Stiles was a lot of things. Tired. Sore. Hungry, eventually, once his stomach stopped churning long enough to complain about its emptiness. He was angry, too. He’d found out the reason why the enemy pack had come in the first place. 

When Laura Hale--the eldest daughter of a strong, respected pack of born wolves--had been 14, an alpha had approached Talia with a proposal to join their two packs in marriage. 

Arranged marriages between werewolves had been a fairly common occurrence in North America, well into the 20th century, Derek had once told them. They had been popular mostly to try to ensure diversified gene pools while bringing in the least amount of humans as possible on the secret. It was only around the 70s and 80s when pack members (particularly female ones) started travelling outside of their territory more easily, and meeting other werewolves that way, that the practice had fallen out of favour, but some old schools of thought still persisted. More traditionalist packs from the flyover states still thought of interpack marriages as business mergers. 

Talia had not been one of the traditionalists. Nonetheless, she had allowed them into her home, the father, his eligible son, David, and a small contingent from their pack. She had been of the mind that there was no harm in letting Laura meet the son, to see if they might strike up a friendship that could turn into more. 

It hadn’t worked. Laura had found him rude, over-confident and creepy, and had refused to even be in the same room after one meeting. Talia had politely, but firmly, declined the request for a formal courtship. 

It was then when they came to understand that the pack hadn’t been intending on any courtship. They hadn’t had any plans for a wedding once Laura had come of age, they wanted a wedding right then. It turned out that they’d pissed off a larger, meaner pack in their home state and had run to Talia’s door in the hope that she’d use her influence to discourage their enemies.

At the time, Talia hadn’t told either Derek or Laura what the pack had done to make this other one so angry, but it had been bad enough that, instead of offering them sanctuary regardless of the marriage merger with her underage daughter, she kicked them to the curb. They’d also never been informed about what happened to the pack after being booted. Peter turned out to be good for something, and a bit of research on his part had answered both of those questions. 

David, about 20 years old at the time, had dated, then assaulted one of the boys in the larger pack. The father had refused to hand over his precious only son to werewolf justice, so most of the pack had been killed in a senseless, bloody battle. Dave, one of the few survivors, had escaped and gone into hiding, fatherless, and mostly friendless, except for a few loyal wolves, and had spent the years rebuilding his pack from vagrant omegas. He’d sought out the Hales when his pack was strong enough, only to find that most of it had been decimated by the fire. That didn’t matter much to him. He’d taken his revenge, then died for it.

It was ridiculous, really. The plot of some action movie that didn’t do as well at the box office as the producers had hoped. 

Derek didn’t tell the sordid story to Stiles. He told it to the Sheriff, and Stiles heard it all through the bathroom door. Derek didn’t have a great gauge of how well humans heard things, so he spoke too loud, and Stiles had to hear the whole thing again from his dad, but condensed, with awkward pauses around things like “history of violence” and “unfortunate bystander.” 

So, yes, Stiles was furious. But in a way, curiously numb at the same time. Also, behind on his school work. Something he wasn’t, though, was a werewolf. 

That first night, Derek had stayed until morning, flitting around the edges of the emotional father-son reunion and the practical aftermath, and waited for either Stiles’ transition or his death. Neither had come. When Melissa had stitched up the deepest part of the bitemark, Derek had been forced to admit that he was healing at the normal human rate, and his body wasn’t tearing itself apart to try and reject the bite. He was like Lydia, but not. He wasn’t a banshee, they knew that for sure. 

When the streetlights were blinking off for the day, they called Deaton, who told them what they already knew: There was nothing they could do that they weren’t already doing. 

The Sheriff sent Derek home with the promise that he’d call if anything happened, and a steely glint in his eye that stopped any argument Derek might have had. 

Stiles understood Derek’s hesitation. He hadn’t stayed with Jackson after biting him, hadn’t pushed harder to bring him into his fold before the kanima had killed people. Even though he hadn’t been the one to bite Stiles, he probably still felt like he needed to be the one to guide him through. 

Stiles didn’t need it, though. He could feel it in his body, the absence of change. He’d closed his eyes sometime around 4AM and listened to the oiled machinery of his body churn along with breath and pulse and he wanted to feel different. He wanted to feel changed, in a fundamental way, in his bones and blood. 

Scott had told him once, after a few shots of wolfsbane infused something, that turning into a werewolf had felt like an ice cold drop of water on a hot stove. It sizzled and spit, but the change kept feeding that drop until it was over. Every time his skin or his muscles would burn with the strain of changing at cellular level, the cooling balm of healing would take it away. Stiles had whacked his shoulder and asked him when he’d gotten so poetic, but the description had stayed with him. 

Stiles felt nothing like that. His skin felt the same, just a covering to keep his insides in, and his muscles were sore in places, but they weren’t healed by icy fire like Scott said they would be. So Stiles was inclined to believe that he wasn’t changing, but he didn’t feel like he was dying either. Just hurt. 

He couldn’t go to school for a while. The wound on his back took some time to heal, and Melissa wanted him to avoid wearing a shirt for as long as possible, to let it breathe. He laid in his bed, face down or on his side, feeling vulnerable in the room temperature air in his bedroom. He kept asking his dad to turn the air conditioning down, so he could stop shivering. 

He also couldn’t sit up on a hard surface for a long time. The stools in the chemistry lab would be murder. That particular wound had been the worst part of Melissa treating his injuries. Worse than the harsh sting of the antiseptic, or the stitches. Melissa had had to put on fresh gloves and turn up the brightness on his desk lamp to look at the damage. It wasn’t bad, she’d said, in her no-nonsense nurse voice. Impersonal, nothing like how she used to sound when she asked him if he wanted a blue or red popsicle. There was some tearing, and she gave him an ointment for when he could stand to stick a hand back there. Until then, she recommended more baths with baking soda, which Stiles was not looking forward to.

He’d been kidnapped on a Sunday, returned early morning Monday and he went back to school the next Wednesday. He probably could have gone back on either of the previous school days of the second week, but no matter what his plans had been the night before, after waking up to the alarm he’d set on his phone, he hadn’t managed to get out of bed. Tuesday, his dad had heard the buzz of the alarm on the bedside table and opened the door, hovering on the threshold in full uniform until Stiles had shut the thing off, curled into a tinier ball and said, “Not today.” 

When the phone went off on Wednesday, playing the annoying default alarm noise, Stiles sat up and stayed at the edge of his bed for a while. He thought of all the reasons why he should go to school today. 

He was missing a lot of important lessons and tests. Senior year was proving to be more challenging than he’d expected, mainly because of an abruptly heavier workload, rather than an actual increase in academic difficulty. His pack probably missed him. They’d each visited a few times, which Stiles appreciated, given that they had just as much school work to do as he did. He was also grateful that they cared about him enough that they’d each voluntarily waded through the thick, sticky awareness that filled every room Stiles was in. 

What really had him standing up from his bed and heading toward the shower to start the day was just wanting to speed up the whole aftermath portion of the trauma of the month. He wasn’t okay, wouldn’t be for a while, probably, but he thought if he put actual clothes on, went about his morning routine, started stressing about school again, he might get there quicker. He could leave the nauseating weight of the past week in the bed he’d been hiding in, shed it like a second skin.

After a shower on autopilot and a bagel he only just kept down, Stiles slid into his jeep and drove to school. Driving felt weird, like he hadn’t done it in years, rather than less than two weeks. He found himself taking corners too slowly and misjudging whether or not he had enough time to make his turn before the pickup truck barrelled into him. He did have enough time, it turned out, then he felt like an idiot for sitting at the corner idling. 

He arrived at school and found that it had been long enough that the student body had moved on to more delicious gossip than the Stilinski kid missing class for a week and a half. Lydia had stoked the rumour machine just hard enough that there had been a consensus of what had happened, but not enough that it would keep it going once there wasn’t any new information. The story was that Stiles had snuck into the city and gotten violently mugged, and his dad had had to come and get him and bring him home in disgrace. It was just embarrassing enough to be plausible, but no worse than anything else he’d been embarrassed about. The Angry Sheriff Dad rescue mission explained why no one had seen him out and about, and why he had to miss out on lacrosse the rest of the year. 

The school day passed pretty much as Stiles had expected. It was almost too normal, if he was honest. Lydia had brought him work that he’d missed, so he wasn’t as behind as he’d feared. Lunch was probably the worst part, since he was still getting used to having to speak to other people in large groups again. His voice wasn’t rusty from disuse, just slower to add itself to the fray. He also had to endure the way all of his friends consciously included him in every conversation, asking what he thought, how he felt about whatever it was they were discussing so animatedly. It made him feel more isolated than anything. Like he was an island off the coast of a huge nation. Included, but not a part of it all. 

At least he was Hawaii in his metaphor, not Alaska. 

The only really bad part came in biology. Mr. Akana got off on a tangent during his lecture on types of bacteria, and ended up going on about this burrowing parasite from South America. Stiles tried very hard not to listen to what he was saying, but he couldn’t avoid the images Mr. Akana had pulled up on the projector, at the students’ requests. They were only as graphic as Google Safe Search would let them get, but the sight of the raw, swollen flesh made the space between his shoulder blades itch and his gag reflex quiver.

For the past week, he’d woken up a few times a night, unsettled and sweaty from barely remembered dreams about festering wounds and black stitches like spiders crawling out of the hole in his back. Just those snatches of hazy images had him getting out of bed to hold up a hand mirror in the bathroom to make sure the bite was still clean and pink with healing. 

Now, with five minutes to go until the end of the day, he wouldn’t be allowed to leave class, even if he wanted to take off his shirt in the middle of a disgusting boy’s washroom to stare at the marks he knew would be perfectly fine. Well, intellectually, he knew it. Viscerally, he wanted to scratch at the wound until he could know for sure that nothing bad had gotten in there, or Melissa hadn’t missed some piece of filth when she’d cleaned it out. 

Stiles fixed his eyes on a set of initials carved into his desk, instead of closing them, which would only start a slideshow on the back of his eyelids of all the images he was trying to escape. He worked through all the breathing exercises his therapist had taught him years ago, then let his gaze drift around the room to distract himself. 

Isaac, the only pack member who shared the class with him, stared at him across the room. Stiles spared a moment to be grateful for the alphabetical seating plan. Stiles avoided his eye contact and looked down at the abstract design on the cover of his textbook, attempting to convince him that Learning is Fun!™. Stiles had learned already that the only thing worse than hovering on the verge of a panic attack was having someone watch you as you clung to the edge. 

The bell rang in time for Stiles to avoid losing his lunch, and he was up and out the door before most of his classmates could reach for their backpacks. He speed-walked to the parking lot, dodging the few students who were as quick as him to escape, and reached for his keys in his front pocket. His fingers were still weak from the close brush with an attack, so it took a long time to fish them out. 

He managed to get the right key pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and stuttered it into the lock, but before he could turn it, the scuff of shoes approaching his vehicle made him whip around to look.

Derek’s eyes were always intense. (It was kinda his thing, along with being generally menacing at all times, and getting hilariously pissed off at tiny things. Or maybe those were more Stiles-and-Derek things.) They flicked to Stiles’ trembling hand on his keys, then back up to his face. 

There was no judgement there, under Derek’s crimped eyebrows. Just a question. Do I have to stop you? Stiles knew the answer to it, even as it was silently asked. Stiles stepped away from the door, leaving his keys to dangle from the lock. He fisted his hands in his hair and walked in a slow circle on the asphalt beside his car. 

He felt stupid. His dad had lectured him for years before he’d been old enough to drive that being drunk wasn’t the only way you could be too impaired to drive. Drugs had been a big one, but the Sheriff had made him promise that if he was too tired, or upset or otherwise distracted, he wouldn’t try to get behind the wheel. He should have realized that shaky, twitchy and panicked was just as bad. 

Embarrassment always made him snappish, and turned on Derek in annoyance. “Were you following me? Making sure I didn’t go off the rails?”

Derek shook his head, for once not rising to the bait and snapping back. “The pack’s still unsettled. It helps to have their alpha nearby, even if they don’t know I’m here.”

Stiles rubbed a hand across his face and felt like a dick for assuming that Derek would stalk him for no reason. In the past couple of years, Derek had turned into a functioning human being, only creeping as much as what came naturally to him. Being part of a united pack had mellowed him quite a bit, and Stiles had forgotten that for a second. 

“Is it my fault?” Stiles asked. “That the pack is unsettled, I mean.”

Derek put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, a tell Stiles hadn’t told Derek about, because he selfishly liked that he knew when Derek was feeling uncomfortable. 

“It’s not because of you,” Derek said, carefully, “but it’s about you.”

Stiles nodded, and released his breath in a rush. Scott, and his dad, and a lot of the rest of the pack had a tendency to put on a brave face and tell him everyone was fine and dandy (Stiles supposed he had to get it from somewhere). If he asked the same question of his best friend, he’d probably get a completely different answer, and Scott would mean it, truthfully, but it still would be dishonest. Derek gave it to him straight, didn’t couch it to make sure Stiles didn’t crumble into a pile of guilty tears. 

“Are you okay to drive?” Derek asked. 

Stiles felt like he was a lot farther from the edge, but he looked down at his hands and they were still quaking. He grimaced. “Probably not.”

“I’ll drive you.” 

“Won’t that leave you stranded? Are you sure you want to leave your car here?”

“No. I came on foot. I feel weird enough hanging around a highschool without a conspicuous black car to try and hide.” 

Stiles breathed out a bubble of laughter. The Camaro had tinted windows and everything. 

Derek reached for the keys still hanging from the door and unlocked it and Stiles walked to the other side of his jeep. It was surreal to be on that side of the car. It made him feel like he should be smaller. The passenger side used to be his when his mom had driven the jeep. Derek pulled out of the parking lot, avoiding jaywalking students who’d finally drifted out of the school. They drove in silence for a while, listening to the jeep’s muffler struggle to do its job. 

Ever since he was little, he’d needed to fill the quiet with something, anything, even if what he was saying wasn’t interesting or relevant. He’d made sure his house was still a loud one after his mother died, though she was was the one who’d always listened to his chatter and no one else wanted to hear it. His dad, as a defense mechanism, had gotten good at tuning him out, and Stiles thought maybe he should have taken that as a hint that he should curb his tendency to crowd the air with his words, but it had been a habit too long held to break. 

Derek was good at silence. He had as much practice at it as Stiles had at being loud. Derek’s silence was simple, intentional, and Stiles found it easier to be quiet when he was around him. Not that he was always quiet around him. But there had been plenty of rides in the Camaro to get food or pick up Scott, where neither of them had said a word, and they’d never left Stiles biting his lips or feeling like he was a shaken bottle with a tightly closed lid. 

This ride was different. Derek’s right leg bounced, even as he braked and accelerated, and it kept jangling Stiles’ house key against the LAX ROX! keychain he’d bought ironically freshman year and ended up carrying proudly. His knuckles were white around the jeep’s steering wheel, which wasn’t too out of the ordinary, except that Stiles could see the bones of his hands grinding together under the thin skin. 

“What is it?” Stiles muttered, under his breath, reluctantly deciding to be the one to start whatever dialogue was eating at Derek.

“Tomorrow’s the full moon.” 

Stiles’ eyebrows popped up at the quick response. He supposed there was no reason for him to avoid the conversation, since it would suck at any time. 

“Oh,” he said, intelligently. He honestly hadn’t looked at his calendar in days, and only knew what day it was from his phone. “What does that mean?”

Derek grimaced and hit the turn signal a little harder than necessary. “I don’t know.” 

Stiles had been through enough full moons with newbie werewolves to know what the drill was, and it normally involved a pile of chains and some _I support you, buddy_ rare meat laid out on a plate. If Stiles had shown any signs of actually being a werewolf, he’d be expecting the same treatment. He hadn’t, so he didn’t know where that left him. 

Deaton was being as unhelpful as ever. Lydia had picked up his slack, but hadn’t found any other reason why Stiles hadn’t changed. Why he didn’t feel the pull of an alpha, any alpha, including Derek, who’d laid the final blow to Dave. Between Lydia and Jackson’s failure to fit into either the “Turn” or “Die” boxes, they were pretty confident that that dichotomy was very much exaggerated, if not outright false. There had to be a reason why he wasn’t going through a second, even hairier puberty. 

Derek turned onto Stiles’ street and eased into his spot in the driveway. After he cut the engine and handed Stiles back his keys, they sat for a minute, aware that while the drive was over, the conversation wasn’t. 

“What do you think we should do?” Stiles asked. 

“It feels like overkill to restrain you.” Derek tapped his fingers against the dusty dashboard, his eyebrows scrunched in thought. “I think you should come out to the house, like always, but we’ll stay closer, this time. Make sure we’re there if something should happen.” 

A bolt of relief streaked through him. He could breath easy tomorrow night, knowing that he’d have his whole pack (plus Peter, who’d likely be creeping on the perimeter) to take him down, if needed. 

“Okay, then,” he said, with a nod more confident than he actually felt. “Thanks for the ride.” 

“No problem.” Derek got out of the car as well and walked off in the direction of Stiles’ backyard, where their property butted up against the very outer reaches of the preserve. By the time Stiles made it up to his bedroom, he couldn’t see Derek out his window. 

Stiles thought about what Derek had said about why he’d been hanging around the high school, and wondered if Derek had really been completely truthful when Stiles had asked him if he’d been following him. Stiles supposed he was part of the pack. And “unsettled” was as good a descriptor as any for how he was feeling. 

Stiles collapsed, fully clothed, onto his bed, and pulled out his phone to keep from closing his eyes and seeing ragged skin with raw, round holes from either parasites or fangs. 

**

The Hale house looked pretty good, these days. On the inside. The exterior was left purposefully worn down and dreary, to keep any curious people away. It looked just fixed-up enough that someone could be living there, but not enough that anyone wanted to toss a free newspaper on the front step. 

The inside was cool, aggressively decorated, yet surprisingly comfortable. It was kind of like its owner that way. The back porch had been rebuilt and sanded and some chairs had been set up so that humans who had no desire to go off into the woods at night could sit without getting splinters in their ass. 

Stiles sat back in the US flag camping chair he’d gotten last July 5th, and rubbed his stomach. Dinner had been nice (Pot roast a la McCall), though they’d all looked at Scott dubiously when he’d said he’d take a turn at cooking. His name hadn’t been on the calendar since June. God, it seemed like a long time ago to Stiles. 

The moon was high overhead, lighting up the backyard where the dim, solar powered lanterns couldn’t reach. They’d milled around the backyard for an hour, walking off their full bellies before they shifted and started chasing each other through the tall, sturdy trees at the back of the property. There was always at least one werewolf in sight. He’d catch glimpses of Erica’s blond hair, or Isaac’s blue T-shirt, which would probably be in shreds by the morning. 

Stiles found himself smiling as he watched the treeline and listened for the deep growls or high, excited yips to float back to him. A particularly strong gust of wind made the trees sing, then Stiles heard at least three of the wolves join in the music with their howls. It was hard to tell them apart from this far away. 

He’d missed this. It hadn’t been any longer, chronologically, than usual. Last month had been Stiles’ night to cook, and he’d knocked it out of the park with his mom’s pierogi recipe. This time, the busy and boisterous pack dinner had been such a relief after the careful, stilted lunch break that day, and the day before. In the rush to get food on plates and in mouths, they’d all been able to forget to treat Stiles with kid gloves. Perhaps Stiles wasn’t as loudmouthed as he normally was, but neither was he a silent ghost, hovering between the ketchup and the orange juice and getting in the way. 

Derek had confessed to him a few months ago over moon-hangover coffee that the pack reminded him of how his family used to be. His lips, normally so flat and tightly held, had curved a bit over the top of his mug as he told Stiles about how hyper and edgy he and his siblings used to get. It was a happy restlessness that they couldn’t fight, and hadn’t wanted to. Stiles had taken a very large gulp of too-hot coffee to get rid of the lump in his throat as he saw Derek watch his siblings in his memories. He’d been sad for Derek, at the time, but also happy that Derek could have something like that again. A pack that was more than just people with a similar genetic mutation. They were family. 

Stiles had never hated the idea of being a werewolf. Even when Peter had offered, it had been mostly the thought of being tied to a blood-thirsty psycho that made him refuse. He’d actually spent a lot of nights over the last couple years making pros and cons lists in his head, not daring to write them down, because then it would become more real somehow. Not a fantasy, or a someday, or a maybe, but a real possibility. A probability, even. 

Full moon nights were when he thought about it the most. He thought about how he might feel to be out there, running alongside these wolves that he cared so deeply about. He always wondered if that bond would be worth the fear of the animal side taking over someday. 

He supposed that fate had done him a favour. Provided he stayed as human as he felt right then for the rest of the night, he’d have the decision taken out of his hands. Yet another reason to be fucking livid with goddamn fucking Dave. Couldn’t even do that part right. His back itched and crawled again as he imagined what it might have been like for someone else to bite him. Anyone else, but most of all--

“Derek back yet?”

Lydia was leaning against the doorframe, staring at him like she knew exactly what he was thinking. She probably did. 

“No. Or, at least, I haven't seen him.”

He was pretty distinctive, these days. He'd figured out how to shift into alpha form, with help from Peter and an alpha he used to know in New York, so he spent most full moons as a sleek black wolf, larger than what would be found in the wild, but nothing like Peter’s humanoid monstrosity. 

“Hm. Well, he won't stay away for long.” She let the screen door slam shut behind her and helped herself to one of the chairs next to Stiles. 

He was always glad when Lydia could join him on full moons. She couldn’t always, since both she and her parents were serious about keeping her grades up. Whenever it fell on a weekday, they had to beg, borrow or steal to get permission to stay home from school the next day. (Allison was on lockdown at her house, which happened every time there was any kind of supernatural dust up. She’d be back once her dad’s hypervigilance faded a bit.)

“How are you?” She asked, when she’d tucked her bare feet under herself.

“Fine.” 

“Really fine, or pretending to be fine?” 

After considering the question, Stiles didn’t think he knew the answer. He was functioning. Eating, sleeping, going to school, talking to his friends and his dad. She wasn’t asking if he was at peace with the world, healing from metaphysical wounds and meditating. She was asking if he was going to be okay. If he was _doing_ , if not doing well. 

“I'm okay,” he decided, finally. And he was. Or, he would be. “What, my performance isn’t Oscar-worthy?” 

“Not necessarily. You could probably fool someone who didn't know you well. Or even a therapist.” She waved a hand in the direction of the trees, and the werewolves running wild in them. “We’re not just any someones. Besides, I've been through something like you have.”

Stiles knew his surprise must have shown on his face. Everyone had been so gentle with him in the last week that it threw him to have her mention the fact that yes, something had happened to him. And something had also happened to Lydia, when they’d all been in sophomore year. He’d never thought about the similarities between their traumatic experiences, but there were a few. 

“Stiles.” She reached out a hand, probably with the intention to touch him, but she diverted at the last minute and laid it on the star-spangled arm of his chair instead. “People who don't know you like we do think that because you talk a lot, that means that you’re an over sharer. I know that isn't the case. You clam up about the things that matter.”

He couldn’t deny it. When it came to words, his or anyone else’s, quantity did not mean quality. 

“I’m not going to hound you,” Lydia said. They both smirked at the undercover dog joke. “And I know that everyone in this pack has dealt with more than any high schooler should. But you and I both know that what you went through was different from simple violence.”

She took back her hand and brushed it across the curve of her shoulder. Her fingers lingered there for only a moment before she switched their direction and plucked at the edge of her shirt. 

“What Peter did,” she continued, her eyes fixed on her fingers on her hem. “It changed me. After he was in my head, messing around up there, I felt like he’d carved out a piece of me and left part of him behind, and I wanted to purge it out more than anything, but there wasn’t anything physical to clean.” 

Stiles’ whole body flinched back from the image, like it had from the grainy picture of a parasite buried under layers of skin in biology. Lydia winced with him, and leaned closer, her hands held up in front of her, defensive, as she did some damage control. 

“What I’m trying to say is that if you need to talk to someone about what happened, I’m here, and I can understand, in a way, what it feels like.” 

Stiles swallowed and fixed his eyes on a knot in one of the wooden steps that he’d always thought looked like a face. He understood what she was offering, and why she was offering it. In all his friends’ visits, none of them had asked how he was healing from the injuries that weren’t the failed bite, or the bruises on his neck and arms, but they all knew. Stiles had appreciated their silence more than he could express, but he’d known it wouldn’t last long, and he wasn’t surprised at all that Lydia would be the one to break it. So, yes, he got it. That didn’t mean he had to accept it. 

“Thanks, Lyds. Any luck finding a reason why it didn’t take? I think it’s pretty much a sure thing now.” He looked up at the moon to avoid her disappointed look at his evasion, but he heard her small sigh. 

“No, nothing yet. Deaton’s pretty much tapped out on resources to check, so it might remain an unsolved mystery.”

“And how mad does that make you?”

“Furious.” 

“Knew it.” Stiles smirked and leaned back in his chair, considering going back for more pot roast, even though the scraps left in the pan were probably cold by now. He hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, but he’d surprised himself by cleaning his first plate. 

The pounding of heavy paws made them both look toward the treeline, and they were both relieved when they recognized the huge black shape hurtling toward them as Derek’s wolf form. He bounded up the stairs onto the deck and they relaxed even further when his tongue lolled happily and his tail wagged. 

“Heya, buddy,” Stiles said, then grimaced. He found it a bit difficult to think of this hulking animal and the Derek he knew as the same person. It was easy to slip up and treat him more like a dog than a human, though he felt guilty every time it happened. 

Derek trotted up to Stiles, then started dragging the side of his face across his knees. It tickled, and Derek’s heavy jaw pushed his legs back into the stiff chair, but Stiles didn’t stop him, just shook his head at weird wolfy habits. When his knees were thoroughly slobbered, Derek backed up, then froze, waiting expectantly for something. After a few seconds, he darted forward, nudging Stiles’ thigh with his nose, then stepping back again. 

“What?” He asked, when Derek did it a third time. “Is this tag or something? I am so not it, dude. Sorry.” 

Derek whined, then snagged a tiny corner of Stiles’ sweater in his teeth and tugged, not hard enough to get Stiles out of his chair, but not unnoticably, either. Stiles allowed Derek to jostle his arm, but didn’t go any further. When he still wasn’t moving after a few minutes, Derek gave up and pranced away again, growling and bowing in a way that Stiles had read in a book meant “come play with me.”

“Sorry to disappoint, buddy, but Stiles plus dark forest with tricky roots and uneven terrain? Not an equation that produces a good outcome for me.” 

Derek had explained that, most of the time, words didn’t mean anything to him in wolf form. He could focus on them if he needed to, but a lot of them, he just let wash over him and picked out the essential concepts instead. At Stiles’ words, Derek’s ears drooped, and his tail went from jauntily waving to brushing the wood of the deck. Stiles opened his mouth to try and soften the blow, but Derek turned around and dashed back to the forest before he could say anything. 

Stiles watched him go, regretting his flippancy, and he didn’t see him for the rest of the night. Lydia left soon after, but Stiles stayed until the sky started to get lighter, and Scott and Isaac stumbled back into the house. 

His eyes were sandy from the long night, but he slapped himself in the face a couple of times and got into his jeep to drive home. He left the window open so that the crisp air would keep him from getting too comfortable and sleepy, and as he drove over the edge of the preserve, he heard a long, mournful howl. 

He wasn’t sure how he could tell that it was Derek, or how he knew that it sounded sad, but it sent shivers down his spine, and his eyes were suddenly smarting from something other than tiredness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Stiles is disturbed by images of bugs, specifically parasites. The images aren’t graphic, but if you want to skip past that, the main images are when Stiles is in Mr Akana’s class, and you can skip to the next section break(**) without missing too much.


	4. Chapter 4

On Monday, he felt less like he was living at a completely different speed as the rest of the student body. The weekend had been quiet and mostly solitary, except for two hours of COD with Scott. Scott told him that both Derek and Deaton had come to the conclusion that Stiles was neither a werewolf nor a kanima, so they’d decided they didn’t need to spend a lot of time worrying over it.

On some level, Stiles agreed. Lydia and Deaton were too busy to waste hours or brain power on answering a question that didn’t have a person’s life hanging on the solution. At the same time, bitterness roiled in the pit of his stomach over the fact that out of all the questions he’d answered, the problems he’d solved, the last minute brain waves he’d had, when he needed an answer, there wasn't one. He was physically itching, psychosomatically or otherwise, to know why the bite hadn't taken, or killed him, or turned him into a reptilian rage monster or some other fucked up manifestation of his teenage angst. 

After Scott left, Stiles tried to crack open his own PDF copies of Deaton’s ancient texts, but looking at the crude illustrations of men halfway through the change, twisted and deformed, howling--maybe at the moon, maybe in agony--made him sick to his stomach. He closed his laptop and stumbled to the toilet down the hall, but he managed to keep down his meager lunch and not-so-meager junk food binge. 

His dad looked at him carefully when he came out wiping away the cold water he’d splashed on his face, but didn’t say anything. (This method had been effective for them so far. No need to change a system that was working for both emotionally-stunted, tough topic-avoiding Stilinskis.)

He’d probably go back to searching in a little while, when those pictures or the matter-of-fact descriptions of failed conversions didn’t give him nightmares filled with bones stretching so long they pierced through skin. As it was, he was sitting in his first class of the day--AP English with Mrs. Harper--nodding off before she’d even started her lesson because his sleep had been less than restful.

The door to the classroom opened and the vice-principal came in, followed by two teenagers about Stiles’ age, one girl and one boy. The teacher and the vice-principal had a quick, whispered conference, then Mrs. Harper nodded briskly and addressed the class.

“Good morning, everyone. Today, we have two new students joining us. Please make them feel welcome. Would you like to introduce yourselves?”

They each gave a brief, boring biography, which included their names, but Stiles missed them, because he was too busy watching Erica, Boyd and Isaac sit up straight and square their shoulders in a way that usually meant _get ready to fight_. 

“Alright, then, welcome to Beacon Hills. We’re going to get started, so please take your seats. There’s a couple of empty desks in the back.”

The two new students nodded and headed toward their seats. As they passed Erica’s desk, their nostrils flared in that tell-tale way that Stiles knew meant they were smelling things that no human could pick up. They looked like their hackles would be thoroughly raised (if they’d had hackles in these forms), but they didn’t stop their progress until they reached Stiles’ desk. 

Again, they scented the air, way more obviously than they should have. This time, both of them smiled when whatever they were sniffing out hit them. The boy was closest to Stiles, and when they locked eyes, he could see hints of beta yellow peeking out from dark brown, but despite that brightness, they looked cold. He was still feeling the chilly path they’d taken from his head to his toes after they moved on and took their seats. 

Mrs. Harper was already on the third slide of her powerpoint when Stiles’ heart rate settled down. When she was too engrossed to mind their inattention, Erica turned around in her desk--one up and a row over--and she curled her scarlet-painted lip, flashing the barest hint of fang. Stiles nodded that he understood. There were werewolves in Beacon Hills, and they hadn’t been invited.

**

As if two unknown, possibly hostile, adolescent werewolves showing up at Beacon Hills High School wasn’t enough, two more new students of the non-human persuasion joined him in Calculus. Only Isaac had that class with Stiles, but other than that, it was like deja vu. The two guys said their names, then took the only empty seats left, and Stiles spent the rest of the class ignoring the prickle at the back of his neck and the twin smirks he caught a glimpse of when he dared to turn and see if they were looking. 

Next, Danny gained a new lab partner in chemistry. The guy was huge and had a truly unfair amount of facial hair for a senior in highschool, but he seemed convincing enough for Harris. Scott’s knuckles were white on the desk beside him, but Stiles doodled a heart with “Mr. Scott Argent” in bubble letters on Scott’s worksheet and Scott huffed and poked him in the ribs. It worked, though, and Scott was too busy getting sniped at by Harris to get territorial. 

At lunch, they wordlessly decided to meet behind the school, near a humming generator they’d discovered could disguise voices from super-sensed beings. It was a similar story from each of them. Almost every one of their classes had at least one new student. From polling their information on names or defining features, they figured there was about 10 of them at the school, all of them werewolves. A pack meeting was organized, once Lydia got Derek on the phone, then they faded away in pairs, so as not to attract attention. 

The rest of the day passed in a blur of lessons spent taut as a wire. Stiles saw a couple of new faces, as well as some familiar ones from that morning. The worst class was the one right after lunch, when he and Allison shared World Religion, and the only free seat was right behind the two of them. It wasn’t like he didn’t think she could protect herself, but he felt exposed without another werewolf there to send out “back off” vibes on an animalistic level. 

When the day was finally over, they all headed to their cars, sorting out the carpool situation on the way. 

“Crap,” Scott said, and stopped in the middle of the hallway. “I forgot I need my English textbook tonight.” 

Stiles hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, already tired from lugging his own books. “Fine, you run and get it, and I’ll meet you in the car.” 

“Wait.” Scott ducked his head and murmured, “You shouldn’t be alone when we don’t know what they want.” 

For a second, his anger flared because he was sure Scott was treating him differently because of what happened to him, and because he thought Stiles couldn’t take care of himself. He was about to say some things he’d probably regret when he looked into Scott’s earnest eyes and saw the same kid who’d gone with him to his mom’s grave when he couldn’t go alone. The kid who’d made sure Stiles went outside occasionally and didn’t get scurvy while he was visiting his abuela in Sacramento the summer they were 12. They took care of each other, even when it wasn’t necessary or requested. All the anger drained out of Stiles, leaving only annoyed fondness. 

“It’s cool, dude,” Stiles said. “There’s a million people out there. What could they possibly--”

“Augh! Don’t say that!” Scott literally put his hands over his ears. “I know you don’t believe in destiny, and I’m not saying I do either, but every cheesy action movie we’ve ever watched has told us that you shouldn’t tempt fate like that. Just in case.” 

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop angering the Gods of Movie Clichés. Get your stuff. I’ll be waiting in the jeep.” 

Stiles was a creature of habit, so he’d parked in the section he always had, next to the lacrosse field and the side entrance of the school. On his way to his jeep every day, he’d pass a rickety picnic table that was usually claimed by the four or five sketchy kids who skipped last period to chain-smoke until the city bus came, but today, they were nowhere in sight. Their territory had been overrun by the new students, who all turned their heads and straightened when Stiles got closer. It was kind of funny, actually. They reminded Stiles of this documentary on meerkats he’d watched. 

His amusement faded when their eyes tracked him the whole way across the parking lot, never wavering, or attempting to be subtle. He wasn’t the only one who noticed: Erica, Boyd and Isaac were waiting by Allison’s dad’s massive SUV, a few spaces over from Stiles’ jeep, and they bristled at the bold way they followed his progress toward the relative safety of the car. 

A few eagle-eyed herds of passing kids noticed it too. It was too overt for them to miss it. Stiles could see them whispering behind their hands and pulling out their phones to text their friends about those _weird new kids staring at Stilinski_. He panicked a little bit, his steps faltering as the final 15 feet stretched out in front of him. 

A hand grasped his arm from behind, and he looked down to see immaculately polished fingernails digging into his hoodie. Lydia. 

“Walk with me,” she hissed in his ear. “People might still think they’re watching me if we go together.” 

Of course, no one would think twice about a bunch of teenagers--new to Beacon Hills and the gloriousness of Lydia Martin--staring at her swaying strawberry blonde hair as she went past. Stiles could only hope that any curious onlookers would be fooled. 

Scott jogged up behind them when they reached the cars, and they loaded up to head to Derek’s place, Scott with Stiles, everyone else with Allison. It was a slow progress to get out of the parking lot, and Scott took the time to stare right back at the strangers. 

“They aren’t friends.”

“What?”

Scott jerked his chin in their direction, narrowing his eyes. “They’re all hanging out together, they did during lunch too, but they don’t really talk. There’s a few pairs of them that chat with each other, but the rest of them just stand around ignoring everyone else. Together, but separate. It’s like a temporary pack, but the ones who talk to each other are from an actual pack.” 

Stiles stared at Scott, his mouth slack, until the guy behind him honked at him to make his turn. When they were on the road, Stiles demanded, “Dude. When did you get so observant?” 

“Osmosis. I think I probably share at least half your DNA just from sitting on your bed for so many hours.” 

“Gross, man.” 

It felt nice to punch his buddy in the arm and laugh over an immature joke. He forgot to be twitchy or worried about the new kids on the block for five whole minutes.

**

At the Hale house, Scott explained his theory about the pseudo-pack, which everyone agreed made total sense, and also meant that there was evidence of there being at least four packs represented. 

The Sheriff had shown up just after they had, with news he thought might have been pertinent. He’d gotten a call from the owner of the small motel on the edge of town, who told him that all of his rooms were booked, for the first time in nearly 15 years. (The last time had been when the National Mac and Cheese Lovers Society had held their annual convention in Beacon City, and Bob was still a bit traumatized. And the carpets still smelled like cheddar.)

He hadn’t been able to help Bob out, since all of the people booking the rooms--teenagers, one or two travelling without any parents--were 18, if just barely, and they’d paid in full. Being “shifty” didn’t mean they could be kicked out with no returned deposit. 

“So, what do we do?” Allison asked, tightening her fists and holding her arms stick straight by her side. They all recognized it as the hunter costume she put on when it suited her. “If my dad was here, he’d say his hands were tied.” 

“He’d be right.” Derek was standing away from the group, as always, his arms folded across his chest tight enough that the muscles in his upper body were even more prominent than usual. “They haven’t hurt anyone, and until we have reason to believe that they will, we have to leave them alone.” 

Scott stood up from the love seat, his voice snapping with incredulous anger. “What? You have to be joking. You didn’t see the way they looked at us, Derek. They’re bad news.” 

Even after all this time, Derek and Scott couldn’t be called friends. Scott’s motley “pack” ,had joined with Derek’s fledgling one and it had worked out great, but as quick as Scott was to forgive when he thought someone deserved it, he could also hold a grudge longer than almost anyone Stiles knew. (Melissa could hold out even longer. A kid once pushed Scott into a bush when they were in the second grade and Mel still wouldn’t even look at their mother if they passed in the drug store.)

Derek inhaled a long breath through his nose, a habit he’d developed as he’d learned to alpha real good. “I don’t disagree with you, Scott, but what they’re doing is not an offensive move. If any of these packs wanted to infringe on our territory, they wouldn’t send so few pack members. They’d bring their full strength. If we run them off for a reason that they don’t consider to be valid, they could bring the full strength of their pack down on us, and no other pack would help us.” “

Scott lurched forward, not really with any intention of starting anything, but Allison’s hand on his shoulder stopped him anyway. “We can’t just sit around and do nothing. The last time a strange pack came to Beacon Hills, Stiles--”

“ _Scott_ ,” Stiles said, and the volume of his own voice shocked him. Everyone turned to look at him, and Stiles could see them fighting their instinct to avoid his eyes. They all remembered what happened last time. “It’s fine. Derek’s right.” 

There was a noticeable absence of shuffling feet, or tapping of fingers while they tried to act natural, even though Stiles’ kidnapping was on everyone’s minds. Stiles appreciated the attempt, and their perceptiveness. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he’d been projecting _don’t want to talk about it, thanks, we’re good, moving on._

“Go home,” Derek said, with finality. “Get some sleep, and go to school tomorrow like normal. We’ll give them a few days to see if they make first contact, then we’ll see what they want. This doesn’t mean that you can’t defend yourselves, but if you can possibly help it, don’t throw the first punch.”

They all filed out, each accepting a pat on the shoulder or a firm handshake from Derek before they stepped off the porch, even Scott. No hard feelings, then, Stiles supposed. Well, no more than usual. Scott’s jaw was still tight, but he flashed his eyes in answer to Derek’s alpha red. 

“I’m gonna squeeze into Allison’s car with the rest, if you don’t mind,” he told Stiles, with poorly hidden excitement. “Her dad’s finally down to just one deadbolt on the door.” 

“Congrats, buddy. Don’t tell me about it tomorrow.”

“Are you sure it’s okay, though? Isaac can ride with you, if you think this pack--”

“I can go with him,” Derek said, way closer to Stiles’ left ear than he’d expected. “Just in case.” 

Neither Scott nor Stiles bothered to argue, recognizing the steely glint in Derek’s eye, even with the sun glaring at them over the trees of the preserve. Stiles was pretty sure he wouldn’t have argued, anyway. He knew himself, and stubborn was a label he owned, but he liked to think he wouldn’t let his pride get in the way of making it home to his dad safe every day, even if that meant he’d gain a bodyguard. 

Derek was familiar enough with the jeep that Stiles didn’t have to tell him to pull down on the passenger door handle to get it to open. He buckled the fraying seatbelt and stared straight ahead while Stiles turned over the engine and inched down the long, pothole-riddled driveway. 

“If there was anything else we could do about this, I would do it. You know that, right?” Derek said as they turned onto the main road. 

Stiles didn’t need werewolf super-hearing to hear that Derek was telling the truth. He hadn’t been angry before Derek had mentioned anything. At least, not at Derek. At fate? At stupid, ingrained werewolf politics and dubiously peaceful strangers? Hell yes. He hated that, just like Dave and his blue-eyed betas, these werewolves had rolled up on their turf, and instead of sending them packing, like they did with Dave--too late--they had to rely on childish avoidance tactics: Ignore the problem until it (hopefully) goes away. 

“Yeah. I get it.” But, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be lining his doors and windows with mountain ash tonight. 

Derek scraped a clean, blunt fingernail across the ragged edge of the seat leather that Stiles hadn’t gotten around to duct-taping over. He shook his head rapidly--a slightly lupine habit Stiles noticed only happened when he was irritated or afraid--then exhaled harshly. “The pack is vulnerable. They’re all strong, especially for new wolves, but we’re so small, compared to what’s out there.” 

Stiles snuck a glance over as he drove, aware that he was seeing a rare glimpse into the anxieties of an alpha werewolf. Derek was always so confident, never going back on a decision once made, rarely showing doubt or fear, if he could possibly help it. It looked exhausting to Stiles.

Stiles drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and tried his best to lighten the load. “Well, like you said. They’re strong. Even stronger when they stick together, and work as a team, and oh my _god_ , I sound like a motivational speaker on workplace training day.”

Derek snorted, a sound that, by all rights, should have been unattractive, but from Derek, it was sardonic and just the right amount of genuine. They drove in silence for a while, the businesses of downtown Beacon Hills giving way to houses as they got closer to Stiles’ street. The short trip was so different from the last time Derek had driven him home that it was just as surprising to him as to Derek that he jumped and braked too quickly when Derek reached for his hand to stop him from playing with the dials on the radio. 

The stoplight a couple of yards ahead turned yellow as Stiles approached, sucking in a slow breath and forcing the arm closest to Derek to stay where it was, instead of curling into his chest. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, when the light was red.

“Don’t be. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I know who you are. I know you’d never--”

“I get it.” 

“ _Fuck._ ” Stiles slammed his hands on the steering wheel. He tapped the horn by accident, and the pedestrian crossing the street yelled at him. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.” 

“Well, then, you know that it’s fine. Same as it was last time.” 

Stiles’ fingers had stopped trembling by the time he pulled into his space in the driveway, but he opened the car door with deliberate care, just in case. Derek knew the way back to his house, so Stiles didn’t stick around to enjoy the awkward silence any longer. 

“Stiles,” he heard, just before he reached the front door. 

“Yeah?”

“I meant you, too. When I said that the pack was strong.” 

“Oh,” he said, his face heating up with embarrassing gratitude. “Thanks.”

Derek was already gone.


	5. Chapter 5

Stiles had nightmares that night. He woke up at four AM from dreams that the full moon hadn’t happened yet, and Dave’s poison bite had transformed him into a monster. Not a lizard, like Jackson, but an unidentifiable mass of matted fur, exposed muscle and teeth in wrong places like the stray parts of an absorbed twin. The human side of himself had been reduced to nothing but a semi-conscious brain locked away and screaming while the thing he turned into killed everyone he loved. 

Once he was awake, he dived for his phone, checking and double checking the moon calendar on his phone to be sure, absolutely sure, that the full moon had passed days ago, he’d made it through, and nothing had happened. When his brain booted up enough to calm down, he knew he wouldn’t be getting any more sleep that night, so he opted to stay up playing Candy Crush on his phone until it was a reasonable time to get ready for school. His dad had gotten off from a double about the time Stiles had come home and he looked like he would’ve murdered someone if Stiles had woken him up before six. 

While he waited for the sun to make an appearance, he remembered his dreams and he fought down the urge to go and find the hand mirror he’d dug out of a drawer a few days ago and look again at the healing wound on his back. He knew what it would look like, though. Messy, still bright red and not looking like it’ll fade anytime soon, but never as bad as he thought it was. 

In the vacuum-sealed quiet and stillness of his bedroom before dawn, he realized that his mind, even in his dreams, had fixated more on being bitten by an evil, disgusting bastard of an alpha than he had on any of the other shit that had happened to him. He wondered absently how fucked up that made him. He buried those thoughts quickly, and exploded blue and yellow blobs of candy until his eyes were sore in their sockets.

School was tense, just like the day before, but both sides of the coldest war BHHS had ever seen kept to themselves. They’d apparently elected to chill with the creepy staring, which Stiles appreciated more than he could possibly say. Stiles even picked up a pencil the big guy in chemistry dropped on the floor, and handed it to him with his fingers on the very tip of the eraser. 

“Thanks,” Big Guy had said, with a bland smile.

“Don’t mention it.” 

If they hadn’t all been so on edge, it would have been like any other school day. Classes were dull, lunch was dubiously edible and after the final bell rang, Stiles headed out to the lacrosse field with his friends. 

He’d taken to watching practices from the bleachers. He didn’t have any particular passion for the sport, but it was nice to see his friends get tortured or have fun, depending on Finstock’s mood. Usually, he was accompanied by a few miscellaneous girlfriends or parents, but the bleachers were large enough that they could sit apart from each other and not have to interact. Erica, Allison and Lydia were working on a project at the public library, so he was even more alone than usual. 

He was messing around with his phone, waiting for the scrimmage to start, when he noticed that he was no longer as alone as he had been. There were people sitting on the bleachers, near to him, even though there was tons of space left on the other end of the stands. Stiles recognized a few of them as the new werewolves in town. 

The whistle blew, the mock game started, and the werewolves crept closer, slow enough that he never even noticed them move. The loose box made of people got smaller on every side as Stiles weighed the pros and cons of getting out of there as quick as he could. 

Someone finally sat down directly behind him, and Stiles whipped around, startled, because he hadn’t even heard their footsteps until they were right there. It was the guy from his English class, the one who’d stared him down that first day, and made him feel like a piece of meat someone was considering taking out of the freezer to thaw. (Tempting, but worth the wait?)

“Can I help you?” Stiles asked the guy, who was staring again. 

“I’m Chad.” 

“Good for you.” Stiles turned back to the game. On the field, the pack kept sending him worried glances, so he guessed he wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping (and smelling) calm. 

“I’m new here. We wanted to ask someone to see if there was some kind of welcome wagon in this town.” 

The hairs on the back of Stiles’ neck were getting a workout. He didn’t want to appear to give this guy the time of day, but it was difficult not to watch his every move. “And you’re asking me because?” 

Chad huffed a little laugh, then exchanged knowing, patronizing smirks with the other wolves. “Well, your reputation precedes you. We’ve heard you’re more than welcoming.” 

Stiles’ body turned to ice, except his face, which started to burn so hot, he thought he might get dizzy. Down below, Finstock yelled at Isaac for missing an easy goal, but the roaring in Stiles’ ears drowned out whatever Isaac said back. “Heard from who?” 

“A couple of omegas. The remains of a pack whose last known whereabouts were right here in Beacon Hills.” Chad looked around, like he was noticing his surroundings for the first time. “Pretty little town you’ve got here. They told us all about how they left their mark.” 

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Stiles said, woodenly, fixing his eyes on Danny at his goalpost, because everywhere else he looked, there were more staring werewolves.

Chad snapped his fingers and widened his eyes in comic surprise. “You know, that’s exactly what I said, isn’t it, Ashley?” 

“You sure did,” Ashley agreed, leaning over Chad’s shoulder. They made up one of the pairs Scott was almost positive were from the same pack. The way they were all up in each other’s space was pretty hard evidence.

“No,” Chad continued, with a new gravity and leering heat to his voice. “I had to smell it myself to believe it.” 

The pack’s exit started as quick as their arrival had been slow. Chad and Ashley were the last to step off the bleachers, and by the time their feet hit the dirt, Stiles had recovered from his uncharacteristic speechlessness.

“What are you talking about?” Stiles stood, clumsily, almost pitching forward onto the benches below. “Fuck your cryptic bullshit. Why are you here, and what do you mean ‘smell it for yourself?” 

Chad mounted the stairs again, his long legs eating up the distance two stairs at a time. He stopped in front of Stiles, only staying back as far as Stiles’ outstretched arms could ward him off. Chad leaned his body back by a scant inch when Stiles brought them up, like he’d been buffeted by a gentle wind. He tilted his head into the air and inhaled through his nose, then flicked a tongue out to taste his lips. With his eyelids lowered in lazy slits, he looked more like a snake than a wolf, but when he spoke, his voice was all grating growl. 

“You smell divine, Stiles. An alpha’s approval coats you like a second skin. You smell like a spoiled pet.” Chad swallowed hard, then flashed the tips of his fangs in a wide smile. “Like you worked yourself to the bone to be the alpha’s favourite toy.” 

Finstock’s whistle blew long and loud, signalling the end of practice. They might have been finishing early, since it seemed like the scrimmage had only just begun, but it was probably for the best. Three members of the team were too busy listening to Stiles’ mortification to really pay attention. 

Chad left with one final smirk, taking the last word with him. Stiles stood on the bleachers, simmering with anger and sick shame, watching as most of the team headed for the locker room, leaving Stiles’ pack on the field. They were as frozen as he was, their sweat probably cooling them off too much. 

To his right came the hollow sound of someone stepping onto the bleachers. He battled the stiffness in his body to turn and look. It was Derek, with Lydia, Allison and Erica close behind him. 

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asked, too harshly for a simple question, but helping to wake the fury that took over the ice. “Did I unsettle the pack again?” 

Derek shifted his feet on the metal bench. “Lydia called me. She said they were here, talking to you. I came as fast as I could.”

“What the hell is going on, Derek?” Stiles demanded, his voice rising as his throat choked with panic. “What did they mean? What can they smell on me?”

He watched Derek’s fists clench at his sides as he struggled to find words. Stiles’ anger flared and he drew breath to shout, but Derek’s words came out in an awkward rush. 

“It’s a disgusting piece of werewolf history. Especially since it isn’t all in the past. Some packs keep humans around. Human offspring, friends, people who found out about werewolves somehow. Sometimes, the alpha will choose not to bite them, but ask them to perform,” Derek broke off and his face twisted. “Certain _duties_. For only the alpha. Once a human fills this role, they’re always marked. It’s more of a metaphysical thing. It doesn’t come off. Even if an alpha gets tired of them, which happens fairly often, they’ll forever be more suited to belong to another alpha in that way, because of their scent.” Toward the end of his little history lesson, Derek had started to talk faster, adopting a clinically detached tone. His expression rippled again, disgust flashing across his face before it was harnessed and replaced by blank sympathy. “If we hadn’t rescued you, the pack who took you might have kept you for...that.” 

The air at the top of the bleachers felt too thin, so he started to climb down, but his knees were weak and he hadn’t taken more than a few steps before he was sinking to the bench, more or less on purpose. He dug his fingers into the tops of his thighs while the backs of them stung from sitting so heavily. “Those werewolves,” he said to his lap. “They aren’t alphas. Why are they here, telling me these things, if it doesn’t matter to them?”

“It _would_ matter if they could bring you back as their mate. You’d be cherished by the alpha immediately. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves. And whoever your mate was? They’d be favoured too.” 

“What the hell, Derek?” Stiles yelled, finally finding the volume he needed, and directing it all to Derek. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know, I swear. I barely remembered that this could happen--” 

Stiles was tired of listening. “Have I been walking around here these past few weeks reeking like I’m anyone’s for the taking?”

Stiles shouting echoed across the empty lacrosse field. Memories of Gerard and Dave mixed and melted into a slurry of helplessness and impotent rage. He jammed his thumbs into his eyes to rub them away, then a warm presence next to him made him scramble back. Derek stood there, his eyes glowing red. Stiles hadn’t heard him take a step. 

“We won’t let them take you. I’ll rip every one of them apart before they put a hand on you.”

Stiles was too far gone into senseless railing to appreciate Derek’s bloodthirstiness. “Well, I don’t know. Sound like a pretty good life. Maybe I should do it. Be a fucking concubine for a pack. Live off grapes and alpha jizz for the rest of my life.” 

“Shut up, Stiles,” Derek barked, just like old times. “Don’t even joke about that. Humans only do it to save their skin. Except for the alpha who takes care of them, they’re treated like dirt. They have the lowest status in the pack hierarchy. Lower than any other humans, even omegas. It’s a double standard that’s gross and backwards, and you don’t want that.”

“Of course I don’t, twinkle dick,” Stiles snapped.

Derek eyebrows shot up and his irises went back to their normal colour. The hard line of his lips twitched and the corner tugged upward. 

“Twinkle dick? Really, Stiles?” 

Stiles heard Isaac cough to hide a laugh, and saw Boyd nudge Isaac’s shoulder to get him to stop. Stiles wiped his face, which was prickling with embarrassment. 

“It was the first thing that came to my head,” Stiles mumbled, and Derek scoffed, a new light appearing in his eyes, not vicious and animal, but relieved. The tension relaxed just a bit, and Stiles stood up and walked down the steps with Derek. He felt drained, and a bit ashamed for yelling at Derek. The ones he should be mad at were long gone, maybe already back at the Tulip Motel making Bob nervous. 

When they reached the grass, Scott hurried over and wrapped him in a tight, backslapping hug. He still had his gear on, and it pressed hard into Stiles’ skin, but he didn’t mind. It was nice to have the life squeezed out of him by his sweaty best friend, after so many days of being treated like glass. 

They broke apart, and cleared their throats of any traces of emotion, then Scott turned to Derek. “Can we get rid of them now that we know what they want?” 

Derek looked at the ground and worked his jaw for a long time before he opened his mouth to answer, so Stiles said it instead. 

“No. We can’t.” Scott’s shoulders drooped in disappointment, and he looked like he might argue, so Stiles explained, “They’re assholes who came all this way for nothing, but they still haven’t done anything that would warrant being run out of town. We have to stick it out. They’ll get the message eventually.” 

While the guys went off to shower, Stiles let himself be herded back to his car by Lydia and Erica, with Derek and Allison trailing behind. They let him get behind the wheel, after assurances that he was fine, really, he just needed to go home and shower off the invisible layer of grime this afternoon of revelations had left on his skin. He could see in their eyes that they didn’t want him to go home alone. The urge to gather him close as a member of the pack was strong, even in the humans among them. 

He shrugged them all off, firmly, but kindly. He nodded at Derek, trying to communicate telepathically that he felt like a total dick for using him as a convenient body to spew his anger at, and he was pretty sure Derek got it. He drove away quickly, cowardly, knowing Scott would try to give him puppydog eyes as soon as he was finished changing his clothes. 

His dad was home when he got there, but he was puttering around the kitchen with a bleary-eyed look that suggested he hadn’t been there long, and was heading to bed as soon as he could. Stiles fixed him a turkey sandwich on auto-pilot, smiling and responding with something or other when his dad apologized for not being around much that week. Stiles understood, had understood since he was a kid, and he hoped he was able to ease his dad’s guilt, since it wasn’t warranted. 

A scalding hot shower didn’t do much to make him feel clean, but he got out as soon as the timer went off on the other side of the curtain. (He’d learned the hard way that standing under the spray for an hour only used up the hot water and turned him into a prune. It didn’t make him feel cleaner, so he set a limit and he stuck to it.) 

Having less than three hours sleep the night before caught up with him when he sat down to his calc homework, so he gave it up and went to bed instead. With his head nodding like it was, there was no way he was going to get any work done, and he had his nightmares to look forward to.


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles tossed and turned, then woke up late the next day, swearing when the bright red numbers on his alarm clock refused to go backward. He skipped breakfast, and all but the barest hygienic maintenance, and thundered down the stairs with his backpack in hand, 15 minutes before the first bell would ring. If he got every green light on the way, he might even be able to go to his locker and catch his breath before class started. 

He wrenched open the door and almost tripped over the welcome mat. ( _Wipe your paws_ , it said, because the Sheriff could never resist a Dad Joke. Even when begged.) He kicked it back into place with his heel, but an unexpected rattle stopped him. He looked back down, and in the corner of the mat was a videogame case. 

For a second, he thought that Scott had chosen a particularly bizarre and inconvenient way to lend Stiles something for his XBox, but on closer inspection, he found that the game was new, still taped closed with security strips. He vaguely remembered the mascot on the front from a huge display at Target he’d ignored a few weeks ago. It was something current, bloody and horrendously overpriced for a game that would be obsolete in less than a year. 

Next to the mat, far enough away that he hadn’t tripped on it, sat a gigantic gift basket. Through the cellophane, Stiles could see things like gourmet kettle corn, fancy cheese and the kind of expensive chocolates that tasted like coffee beans and dust.

Stiles dropped the game by the basket and pulled out his phone, no longer quite so concerned about being late. He shot off a text to Derek, and got the response he was expecting almost immediately. He tucked his phone back into his pocket and picked up the items from the porch. He tossed them onto the passenger seat with maybe a bit more force than was necessary, then floored it to school. 

**

Mrs. Harper was still collecting homework when Stiles skinned in two seconds before the bell, so she didn’t say anything, merely raised an eyebrow and turned back to the chalkboard. 

The seat in front of Stiles, normally occupied by a girl who was absent because she’d gotten her wisdom teeth out the day before, didn’t stay empty for long. Chad straddled the chair backwards, leaning on his elbows on the back of it. 

“Hi, Stiles. Did you like my gift?”

Stiles barely flicked his eyes up from writing the date in his notebook. “Which one was yours?”

Chad’s jaw clenched in Stiles’ peripheral vision, but he rallied quickly. “The basket. Were the sweet things as tasty as they looked?” 

“Dunno, ask Jerry.”

“Jerry?”

“The homeless guy that hangs out downtown. I saw him at a stoplight this morning with his cardboard sign and said to myself, ‘now, there’s a guy who’d appreciate a bunch of overpriced crap in a wicker basket.’” Stiles finally looked up to level an unimpressed stare at Chad. “Because I sure didn’t.” 

Chad’s smirk dropped from his thin lips, and his buddy Ashley cackled at the back of the room. He looked like he would have attempted to defend his gift, but Mrs. Harper snapped at him to return to his seat so she could start. The topic was dystopian literature, and Stiles zoned out almost immediately. He had enough of that in his real life. 

His pocket vibrated, and he pulled out his phone while Mrs. Harper’s back was turned. Erica had texted, _wat was tht about? did we miss ur b day_?

**Nah. Apparently werewolf courting rituals are largely based on gift giving. Derek said I should be glad I didn’t wake up with half a deer on my porch.**

_Don’t insult yourself, honey. ur worth a whole deer at least._

**

Stiles grabbed a granola bar from his locker on his break, holding it between his teeth while he switched out his light-as-anything English assigned reading for his heavyass calculus textbook. He didn’t hear someone come up behind him until warm breath whispered in his ear, “Did you bring enough to share?” 

He flinched away and bit the granola bar in half accidentally. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t coordinated enough to catch it before it tumbled to the dirty floor. He stared at it mournfully, long past time for the five second rule, then he looked up at the girl who’d made him drop it in the first place. She wasn’t in any of Stiles’ classes, but he recognized her from yesterday as part of the new pack. 

“That was my breakfast,” he said, flatly. 

“Aw, shucks. My bad.” 

“That was the last one in the box.”

She smiled wider, flicked her dark hair over her shoulder and purred, “I could give you something else to eat.” 

“You got some Nutella stashed somewhere?” At her blank look, Stiles shrugged. “It’s part of a balanced breakfast. Well, not really. Full of sugar.”

“You’re funny. I’m Brittany.” 

“Hi, Brittany, I’m funny...oh, wait. You already did that one. Darn.” Brittany laughed, an awful, forced giggle that made Stiles’ nose crinkle up involuntarily. He clicked his padlock closed and picked up the forlorn granola bar to toss it in the trash. “Well, this has been a time. See you, Brittany.” 

“You sure I couldn’t share anything else with you, Stiles?” She lunged in closer as Stiles passed, inhaling deeply next to his collarbone. 

“Whoa.” He ducked out of her reach, almost colliding with an angry-looking freshman. “Yeah, yes, definitely sure.” 

“I’ll be around if you change your mind,” she called, loud enough to be heard even as he left her behind. 

Stiles sent her a two finger wave without turning around. As he shouldered through masses of people hurrying down the hallway, he avoided curious glances from classmates who’d known him since elementary school. He wasn’t surprised at their confusion. Brittany was Bad Touch Central, but she was pretty. Lithe limbs, tan skin, dark hair. If they ignored the sharky grin and total lack of a personal bubble, she’d be a downright catch. Stiles might have gained a bit of social standing through being friends with Lydia and Allison, but he was still _him_ , and Stiles Stilinski, a solid six on a good day, did not get hit on by nines.

Stiles ignored the considering glances and put Brittany out of his brain, before Lydia read his mind and started lecturing him on ranking people based on attractiveness. Again. 

**

Stiles shovelled down his soggy sandwich, and drummed his fingers on the table while everyone else ate at a glacial (normal) pace. 

“Finished?” He asked the table at large, eventually. “You want to play some frisbee?”

“With you?” Isaac drawled. “I’d like to keep my spine the way it is, thanks. 

“What?”

“With your luck, you’d end up getting decapitated, and Derek would rip out my spine. _Fatality_.” 

“Hey, I caught a frisbee once, and I managed to not break my finger.” His mistake was eye contact with Boyd. He could never keep the truth from those soulful eyes. “I only dislocated it.” 

“Yeah, not worth it.”

Stiles unzipped his bag and pulled out the video game, then tossed it on the table. “Well, if we can’t play frisbee, what am I going to do with this useless piece of plastic?” 

Scott snatched up the case and brought it to his face, his eyes going wide as he saw the title and the distinctive logo. 

“This is…” he breathed. “Is this...?”

“Yep.”

“Where did you--?”

“One of my not-so-secret admirers.” 

Scott deflated. “Oh. I guess we’re not playing it, then.” 

“Not a chance. Sorry, dude.” 

“No worries,” Scott slid the game back over to him with an easy smile. “I’ll still kick your ass at Halo.” 

“In your dreams. Supernatural werewolf coordination and strength does not extend to video games. This has been established.” 

“Reflexes, though--”

“I think frisbee is a great idea, don’t you, Erica?” Allison broke in, already having heard this debate a few times. “We’d better hurry, though. Lunch is over soon.” 

“I agree.” Erica leaned over Isaac and grabbed the game, then the two of them headed out the door. 

Isaac sighed, and picked up his tray with his half-eaten lunch. “Fine. But if anyone gets killed, I want the record to show that I thought this was a bad idea.”

**

Lacrosse was BHHS’ game of choice, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be impressed when a bunch of freakishly sporty students started throwing around a makeshift frisbee. Their grass-shredding dives and high-velocity catches from 4 feet off the ground soon gathered a small crowd, including the werewolves from out of town.

Stiles and Allison had tapped out when things started to turn bloodthirsty, so he had a great view when a werewolf named CJ (Stiles only knew his name because the guy put up his hand for every single question in calc, because he loved to hear the sound of his own voice) saw the object they were tossing around and his face went from smug to pissed in two seconds. The other werewolves, particularly Ashley, shoved CJ’s shoulders and laughed meanly at his failed courting gift. 

The plastic finally broke just before the first bell rang, and Scott gathered up the shards of the disc and tossed them in the trash with a wistful sigh. Stiles felt a little bad that they hadn’t kept it intact and dropped it in a charity box or something, but the point he’d made was worth it. 

Stiles was twitchy for the rest of the day, hyperaware of eyes on him. It felt like he was being sized up. It was likely that his unfavourable reaction to the first gifts had been unexpected. 

He had homework, so he stopped by his locker a final time to fill his bag with binders and books. While he organized, digging through old papers and candy wrappers, a werewolf--another boy he didn’t know the name of--leaned against the locker next to Stiles. He crossed his arms and watched as Stiles filled his bag, not saying anything, but managing to be loud with his presence anyway. 

Stiles closed his locker door at the same moment that Boyd appeared at the end of the hall, waiting to drive him to the pack house, on Derek’s orders. Derek had texted him that afternoon telling him the plan, and Stiles didn’t argue with when Derek used that kind of caps lock. (Stiles would keep it to himself that he didn’t really mind. The thought that someone--two someones, actually--had been on his porch leaving packages freaked him out a bit.) Boyd frowned as he spotted Stiles and picked up his pace, but it wasn’t easy when most of the people in the hallway were going the wrong direction. 

“You don’t have to go with him, you know,” New Guy said, behind Stiles.

Stiles glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t?”

“Let me guess. Pack meeting? You guys seem like the type who would have one of those every week. Any excuse for a gossip session, right?” The guy pushed off the locker and took a couple of slow steps toward Stiles. “Sounds like fun. Especially for Hale. You must get the seat of honour, right between his legs.”

Everyone in the hallway startled at the hollow clang of a person being slammed into a locker. Boyd used his whole body to pin the asshole against the metal, his big hands jammed up against his throat.

“Maybe your alpha would abuse his power like that,” Boyd growled. “Not ours. You know nothing about the Hale pack, and even less about Derek, so shut your mouth.”  
Boyd gave the guy one more hard shake, then let go and took hold of Stiles’ shoulder. He steered them both through the sea of gawking students, and they were out the doors before any teachers could be called. They’d both probably get called to the office the next day, but they’d worry about that later. 

Boyd still used the bus when he couldn’t get a ride with Derek, so they both climbed into Stiles’ jeep to head to the pack house. Stiles drove, as usual, and didn’t attempt to put on any music, since he’d only get an unimpressed hand slap from Boyd anyway.

He and Boyd were friendly. They’d been there for each other as pack members in tough situations, but they weren’t each other’s go-to confidant or protector. Stiles snuck a glance over at Boyd as they stopped at a red light, and he was back to his normal placid, deep water demeanor. If Stiles hadn’t seen him with murder in his eyes just five minutes before, he wouldn’t have guessed Boyd was capable of it.

“So,” Stiles said, to break up the horrible, awkward silence. “That was a thing.”

Boyd didn’t say anything.

“I mean, I’m grateful. That guy was a douchebag. I just wouldn’t have expected you, of all people, to jump to Derek’s defense in quite so physical—”

“Me, of all people? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Stiles sputtered, “Well, you know. Everything’s worked out now, but I hadn’t thought you’d be nominating Derek for Alpha of the Year any time soon, considering your rocky start.”

It sounded stupid the moment it left Stiles’ mouth. It had been a long two years since Derek had bitten his first three betas, and any lingering resentment had been cleared up in that time. Scott was the only one who still held any grudges.

“He made mistakes,” Boyd agreed, mildly. “Didn’t tell us enough of the things we needed to know. But he’s spent the past two years making up for it, and being the best alpha he knows how to be. I won’t let anyone talk about him that way.”

Stiles nodded and turned his attention back to the road. They arrived at the house a few minutes later and Boyd patted the hood of the jeep as he got out, in lieu of thanks for the ride. Stiles supposed they were even. One carpool trip was probably about equal with one bodyguarding session.

Stiles’ phone went off as he unbuckled his seatbelt. _Whats this I hear about 2 guys fighting over you? 1 of them being my BF?_ Erica had texted. They were probably already on their way over.

**It wasn’t that dramatic. Some dude got mouthy, Boyd put him in his place.**

_Huh. Well ur a hot commodity now Stilinski._

**Ugh. He didn’t even do anything. Much.**

_Is tht going to be a problem re: pack etiquette? Shd I tell everyone to man battle stations?_

**Nah. I’ll ask Derek, but Boyd didn’t hurt anyone, and he was well within his rights to defend his alpha.**

_Yikes. Wut did he say to get B so angry?_

**You don’t want to know.**

_K. I can guess, tho_

Stiles was sure she could, but he didn’t really want to go into it, so he put away his phone and got out of the car. Derek was already on the porch with Boyd, gripping his shoulder and telling him something that had Boyd nodding and smiling just a little. “Hey,” Stiles greeted as he jogged up the steps to join them. “What’s the plan for today?” They usually ran drills a few times a month, not unlike lacrosse, but with more emphasis on survival than beating another team. Stiles typically sat on the sidelines and made fun of them. “The betas are going to be running off some aggression.” Derek looked pointedly at Boyd, who didn’t look cowed in the slightest. “Should I get my homework then?” “No. Come with me." They left Boyd to wait for the others, and Stiles followed Derek around the house. Derek stopped when they were in the middle of the wide backyard, and turned to face him, a stern look on his face. “I want to teach you something,” he said, holding his fists tightly down at his sides. “Is it how to make a knuckle sandwich? Because that’s what your face is saying.”

“No,” he snapped, then frowned. “Well, sort of. Defense. It’s idiotic that we haven’t bothered with teaching you up until now. Your strength is nothing compared to a werewolf’s--”

“Gee, thanks.”

“--but I can teach you some tricks so that you can fight dirty and buy some time, without tiring yourself out.” 

“Huh. Makes sense, I guess. When should we start?”

“Right now.”

“Now?”

Derek looked pointedly at Stiles’ backpack, then at the porch. Stiles got the message and shrugged it off, leaving his outer shirt there as well. Derek waited patiently, then cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders to prepare. Stiles sighed. That was never a good sign. 

“Am I the only one here?” Stiles asked. “I have to go through this punishment by myself?” 

“Forgive me for assuming that you don’t want all of your friends to see you get pummeled.” 

“That’s a good point, actually.” 

**

Stiles groaned and dropped his head to the dirt. "Enough," he moaned, flexing his fingers to try to get the feeling back in them. They'd been going for hours, teaching Stiles how to duck and roll, and get back up again before he could get kicked. How to hit hard enough to do damage to a sensitive area, then dart away quick enough to avoid getting hit back. 

Derek paced next to him, stretching out his chest muscles from the pathetic beating they’d taken. "You can go one more round."

"Yeah, I could. If you wanted me to die before it was over."

"You wouldn't die."

"You're right. I would probably puke, though."

Derek sighed, then Stiles felt, more than heard, his footsteps go in the opposite direction. 

Stiles let his eyes fall closed and tried to focus on the cool, damp grass on the back of his head. It felt good, even through his soaked hair, so he spread his arms out to his sides to feel the same thing. He could barely lift them, but he dragged them along, in a lame but soothing grass-angel. 

He was shaky and he still wanted to puke, but also felt a bit...good? Tomorrow, his muscles would be sore in that way that felt kind of awesome when they flex, so he’d probably be doing it all day. Casually. Subtly. Making sure no one saw.

The grass next to his head twitched, and Stiles opened his eyes. In the fading late afternoon light, a bottle of water glistening with condensation hung above his head. 

“Sit up to drink this,” Derek said, cracking the cap. A few stray droplets fell into Stiles face, which made his eyes sting, but it was worth it. “And don’t drown in a couple inches of water, please.”

“Won’t drown. Gimme.”

He lifted his arm up, but Derek held the bottle just out of reach of his grasping hands, so he was forced to lever himself into a sitting position. He’d almost reached the beacon of sweet, sweet wetness, but then Derek stood up and walked away with it. Stiles nearly cried. 

“What am I, a donkey? I need water to _live_ , Derek.”

Derek eased himself down onto the porch step, waggled the bottle of water, then placed it on the seat beside him. Stiles groaned again, and stumbled the rest of the way up and over to the step. He fumbled off the cap of the bottle and took a deep gulp, but switched to sipping after Derek’s look. 

Derek pulled a clean, white towel from nowhere and dropped it on Stiles’ head, then rubbed his fingers over Stiles’ hair aggressively. Stiles waited for Derek to take his hand away so that Stiles could put the towel to use himself, but his heavy, broad palm lingered, stroking his scalp through the thick fabric. It felt amazing, and he missed it the moment it stopped. 

His head tingled where Derek’s hand had been, and the familiarity of the feeling made him realize how long it had been since Derek had touched him, other than the instruction he’d given today. (Somehow, Stiles didn’t think a foot to the kneecap counted as a “touch.”) It wasn’t like either of them had been all over each other before, but Stiles thought back, and before his kidnapping, their interactions had been peppered with hair ruffles, hip checks and shoulder pats. There sure hadn’t been a foot and a half wide gap between them when they’d sat on these stairs.

Stiles finally sipped enough of the water that he didn’t feel like the Sahara, so he slid over on the step and smacked Derek in his unfairly meaty thigh. Derek remained disappointingly passive, but he accepted Stiles’ shoulder-to-shoulder nudge, and even relaxed into it, despite Stiles’ general dampness. (Who knew shoulders could sweat?)

The whole afternoon, Stiles had seen glimpses of his friends skirting the edges of the lawn, but none of them had intruded on the lesson. He could hear the echoes of their growls and their laughing voices, though never a full blown howl. It wasn’t the full moon, after all, or anywhere close to dark. 

“Do you think I’ll be putting this stuff to use anytime soon?” Stiles asked. Derek looked over at him, like he knew what Stiles was really asking. _Am I in danger?_

“I’d like to say no.”

“But?” 

“You don’t…” Derek broke off, looking down into his lap and rubbing his palms on his thighs. He took a slow breath and formed his words slowly and deliberately. “You can’t smell yourself like they can.” Stiles must have frowned, because Derek rushed to clarify, “I’m not making any excuses for them. It’s just that none of them seem particularly inclined to resist their urges.” 

Stiles nodded that he understood and Derek relaxed, though he kept chafing his jeans with his palms, a nervous tic that was uncharacteristic of Derek. “Well,” Stiles said, “hopefully, they’ll keep it in their pants and I won’t have to murder anyone’s solar plexus.

Stiles hadn’t been a natural at the moves Derek showed him, but he hadn’t been completely hopeless, either. He’d never be as strong or as graceful as a werewolf, but he’d lost a bit of his growth-spurt clumsiness in the last year. It made him chuckle a little to think of how bad he might have been if they’d tried teaching him that stuff when he was 16. 

After two years of periodic supernatural interference, it was amazing that he hadn’t picked anything up, though not inconceivable. He was never in the offensive team. He stuck to the sidelines, tossed the smoke bombs from far away, waited for the last possible moment to come to the rescue. If they needed a human in the thick of it, they’d choose Allison, who’d been kicking ass since she was small, or Lydia, who could scream her way out of any tight spot. 

“You can’t think that way.” 

Stiles startled, and his sore muscles twinged. “What way?”

“If we’d done this,” Derek waved his hand at the yard at large, where they’d started giving Stiles the tools he needed, “months ago, the pack that did that to you still would have been stronger. They still would have outnumbered you. If you want to be angry at something, do it. Get it out of your system. Spend a week being mad at the pack for not protecting you. At me, for bringing my family’s past down on you. Don’t be mad at yourself for not knowing this stuff.” 

Stiles rubbed his achy knuckles as the truth of what Derek said settled in. It didn’t matter if he knew a few parlour tricks now. It wouldn’t have helped, not against Dave and his pack of betas with blue eyes.

“Nah, I won’t do that.” Derek stared at him hard, trying to detect a lie. “I’m not saying I’m not pissed off. I’m angry as hell. But it isn’t at me, or at any of you.” Just Dave. Fucking Dave. 

“Good.” 

Scott and Isaac stumbled out of the woods, then, laughing and trying to push each other over. Their muscles were probably pleasantly tired, while Stiles’ were stiffening up and complaining from sitting on the hard porch. 

“Scott,” Derek called. “We’re done here. Would you ride with Stiles?”

Scott nodded and Stiles whined until Derek relented and pulled him to his feet at the bottom of the steps.


	7. Chapter 7

Every other day, he went over to Derek’s to work on his defense moves, and every time, his muscles screamed a bit less. A tiny bit less. They still made their displeasure known. 

He didn’t wait for the pack to drive with him anymore. Derek waited outside for classes to end, looking just as conspicuous as ever in dark sunglasses and a darker scowl, but he was never late. One time, Stiles’ stomach rumbled audibly after their session, so Derek started fixing snacks for them after every practice, whether or not Stiles was hungry. It was tasty stuff, too, which Stiles wasn’t surprised about, since Derek took twice as many turns cooking pack dinners as anyone else. The food was also way less dependent on rare meat than Stiles liked to tease. 

The last time he’d been over, rather than let Stiles fall into a food coma on top of his post-workout nap, Derek had dragged him out for a walk in the preserve. It was odd, for Stiles, to be there in the daylight, and without something pursuing them, or something sinister to look for. He was able to appreciate the beauty of the place he was lucky enough to have in his backyard. Seeing it through Derek’s eyes really helped. They’d ended up in a clearing with a big fallen tree and a view looking over greater Beacon Hills, and it had been the nicest afternoon Stiles had had in a long time. It was a good distraction from the way most of his days went. 

The gifts that had been funny, in a way, became less of a joke by the end of the first week. At the beginning, rejecting them was a way to stick it to the transient pack. They could keep their Ralph Lauren jeans, and their brand new tablets(Samsung, not Apple). But there was only so many times he could give the stuff away, or throw it out before he felt so hounded he could scream. 

Stiles started using the back door of his house exclusively and walking all the way around the house to avoid stepping over the pile of useless, impersonal gifts that crowded each other on the ridiculous welcome mat that was supposed to be for his pack. His dad usually disposed of them, dropping the majority at a charity and throwing away the $30 thick cut steaks that were left to rot for 8 hours while Stiles was at school, muttering about stalking and restraining orders as he did so. 

The first day the steaks started appearing was a turning point. Fruit baskets and gift cards were one thing, but seeing that slab of meat laid out on a foam tray, still bloody from the butcher had driven home a reminder of what they wanted from him. One succulent piece of meat for another.

It didn’t matter how many times he gave the cold shoulder or the silent treatment. The innuendos and outright come ons continued, and Stiles could do nothing about it, except walk away. Or, he supposed, try to involve a teacher, but explaining to the ancient vice-principal why he suddenly had the attention of nine strapping young werewolves was too horrific to contemplate. The guy Boyd had put in his place hadn’t stuck around, or brought his pack back with him, but they couldn’t be sure that the others would be so easily cowed, so Stiles’ hands were tied. 

A couple of days ago, a quiet but pretty girl asked him out, her friends clustered at the end of the hall, giggling and egging her on. A few months ago, he’d have been thrilled. Now, he stammered through a kind rejection because it meant nothing. She was in the same grade as Stiles, had been for all the years that he’d been desperate for someone to notice him in that way. Well, he’d been desperate for Lydia to notice him, but he would’ve gladly put his 10 year plan on hold if someone had asked. Ever since he’d given up on that particular dream, and broadened his horizons, he’d been more worried than ever that he was unlovable. He felt bad, and it didn’t make her a bad person, but being asked out because he was suddenly getting attention from the increased werewolf population? Not something he appreciated. 

That morning, his Dad texted him to check the mail before he headed out, because he was waiting for a package for work. Stiles agreed, since he knew his dad wouldn’t have asked him to wade through the packages on the porch for anything that wasn’t important. Stiles stepped over the gifts on the mat (Steak Person had put it in a cooler this time, which would have been smart, except Stiles would leave it there long after the ice melted. Good try, buddy,) and sifted through the bills and flyers in the mailbox, but there wasn’t a package or a delivery slip. 

He headed to his car with his gaze held stubbornly up from his feet, which was probably the only reason he noticed the little scrap of green on the railing of the porch. He stopped, and studied the small bundle of leafy sticks before he reached out to touch it. It didn’t look like a spell or anything like that. There was only one kind of plant, and the string it was bound with was plain twine that didn’t itch or burn when Stiles touched it. The whole thing was about the length of his palm, and no wider than two of his fingers, but the bow holding it together had been tied with care. Carefully, he brought it closer to his nose, though he didn’t let it touch his face. It was fragrant enough that the smell hit him from 5 inches away. It was a nice smell. Sharp, clean, but savoury. It smelled a bit familiar, like it might be used in perfume or cooking or something, but he couldn’t place it. 

He took it with him to the jeep, placed it on the dashboard and thought about it the whole way to school. It seemed an odd choice to leave as a gift, after over a fortnight of flashy clothes and electronics. All the werewolves who’d been “courting” him so that they could take him back home to Daddy (or Mommy, creepers were equal opportunity) were desperate enough that they didn’t bother to give a thought to what Stiles might actually like to get. They were so busy trying to one-up each other that, so far, they hadn’t been able to comprehend that he wasn’t interested in being anyone’s sugar baby. 

He pulled into a parking space at school, and studied the little bundle again. It provided no more answers than it had on his front porch, placed deliberately in a spot where he might easily have missed it. On a whim, he tucked it in the pocket of his hoodie, and promptly forgot about it for the entirety of his first class. He only remembered it in second period when he was looking for his phone, and he jerked his hand back after coming in contact with the spiky-soft stalks. 

He ran his fingers over the tiny leaves as he waited for class to begin, and CJ leaned on his desk. 

“What’s that, Stiles? Do you like flowers? I could send you some if you like.” 

“No, thanks. I’m allergic.” _To assholes like you,_ he struggled not to say. 

“Flowers have their own language, right? I could spell out exactly what I want to--”

At the front of the class, Isaac’s hands came down hard on his desk, and he glared at CJ until he raised his hands and walked away. Isaac and Stiles shared an exasperated eyeroll, and Stiles put the plant away for safekeeping. 

Stiles did actually do some research on a computer in the library. He learned that the little stick with leaves on it was actually thyme, which made sense. Stiles was pretty sure he had a little can of it--dried and ground--in the cupboard next to all of his mom’s other spices that he never had any clue what to do with. There were a lot of different websites that gave him lots of different meanings of the herb, but all of them agreed on it being a symbol of courage and strength. 

Stiles liked that. He wasn’t sure if whoever had left it knew that that would be his takeaway, but worrying the battered plant kept him focused and “courageous” through to the end of lunch, even though he was bothered three separate times with stage-whispered flirtations that only served to get them in hot water with the school librarian.

He was able to tune it all out so well that he didn’t notice the first bell going off. The librarian _ahemed_ and asked him if he had a class he needed to get to, and he booked it out of there. When he got to the hallway, he realized that there was no way he’d get to the other side of the school before class started, so he didn’t bother to run. He kept his head down as he went to class, and noticed that the little red light was blinking on his phone. 

He pulled it from his pocket, unlocked the screen and was bombarded with 20 unread texts, five missed calls, and three voicemails, all from unknown numbers. He only glanced at the previews of the texts, but it was pretty clear right away who they were from. He cursed out loud, glad he was in an empty hallway instead of a crowded classroom. As he looked, his phone went off twice more, and while he tried to avoid it, it was impossible not to read the incoming texts. The explicit words made the bile rise in his throat. 

He quickly turned the screen black, and swallowed the rush of saliva, then covered his mouth just in case he couldn’t get his gag reflex under control. The fresh, clean scent of thyme that stuck to his fingers filled his nose, and it was surprisingly nice. He felt like an idiot, standing in the middle of the school sniffing his fingers, but it distracted him enough that he could put it from his mind and get to class. 

The lingering scent kept him occupied for the rest of the day. He ignored his phone’s constant buzzing, and chose not to think about how they could have gotten his number. He didn’t have it on his Facebook page, but it wasn’t like he’d been particularly conscientious about who he’d given it out to. Once school was over, he braved the rapidly appearing texts to let Derek know what was going on, and received a string of creative cursing in return. It made him laugh, and he appreciated it. 

He wasn’t scheduled to go to Derek’s that day, so he went home and caught up on the homework he’d had to push forward to fit in a few hours of physical punishment and snack time the day before. When he looked up from his essay on Western Colonialism, it was way past dark, and his eyes were burning in their sockets. He blinked away the blue screen haze and reached up to squeeze the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He had a bad habit of channelling Gollum when sat at his computer too long. 

Still rolling his shoulders, he stripped down to just his boxers and T-shirt and plugged in his phone. The battery was shockingly drained for how much he hadn’t used it, but that’s what he got for leaving his number somewhere his eHarmony Matches from Hell could find it. 

A new message came in while he waited for the green charging light to come on, and instead of dismissing it, he accidentally opened it. When he read the text, his whole body went cold. 

_UNKNOWN NUMBER: U got a sore neck hun? Let me rub tht out 4 u bby_

It was so cheesy. Like a parody of a bad come on. But Stiles’ fingers went boneless, and he dropped his phone. It fell with a muffled thump on the carpet and he left it where it lay. He threw open the door of his bedroom and pounded down the stairs to the kitchen, where the portable phone was charging on the counter next to the refrigerator. He dialled the number his dad had made him memorize with quaking fingers, on the stupid landline he’d been after his dad for years to get rid of. 

“Hello?” His dad answered. Stiles’ throat locked up, and he couldn’t speak. He simply slid down the fridge to the floor, his knees drawn close to his heaving chest, magnets digging into his back. “Stiles, is that you? I’m just about to leave the station, what’s wrong? Stiles, answer me. Are you okay?”

“They’re outside,” he croaked, like a pretty white girl in a horror movie. “Right now.” 

The line went silent, then, “Stay there. Don’t move at all. Did you lock the door behind when you came home today?” 

“Yes.” Though a wooden door wouldn’t keep a werewolf out for long. 

“Don’t move an inch. Keep breathing. I’ll be there in five minutes.” 

“Okay.” 

“Do you want me to stay on the line?”

“Yes.” God, yes. If the house got too silent, he was afraid he’d hear the sound of his phone vibrating with more new messages, and that would spell the end of his tenuous hold on his panic. 

“Alright, son.” There was a scuffling, and a muted beep. Probably his dad switching to hands free. “Stay there, don’t pass out. Four minutes.” 

Four minutes. Easy. He could wait. 

He didn’t have a choice. 

**

He regretted his panic the moment his dad got home. He was fine. Perfectly safe. It wasn’t like he hadn’t known they knew where he lived. That wasn’t a surprise. Up to that point, strangers coming to his house and leaving their offerings on his porch hadn’t been anything more than annoying. He’d only panicked because he was on edge from the texts and phone calls he’d been ignoring all day and he’d been reminded of how little it would take to gain entrance to their poor sanctuary.

None of them would try anything. He knew that. The moment one werewolf actually set a toe over the line and touched Stiles without permission, or hurt him or his pack in a physical way, they’d be punished, swiftly and brutally. Until then, they were in the same boat as they Hale pack: Bound by pack tradition and the desire to keep blood from being spilled. All other bodily fluids were fair game. 

His panic attack was over, and he was fine. Or, as fine as he was going to be, considering he’d never be able to leave his blinds open for the rest of his natural life. But as soon as his dad had gotten off the phone with him, he’d called Scott, who’d called Allison and Derek, who’d texted everyone else, and soon he found himself with an emergency pack meeting in his living room. 

“Guys,” he said, into the tense silence. “This is unnecessary. I over-reacted, but everything is fine now.” 

His dad and Scott both looked at him, and from their expressions, they clearly disagreed. 

“Everything is _not_ fine,” Scott said, and looked about two seconds away from stamping his foot like a child. “This is way too far, and we have to do something about it.” 

“Yes, we do,” Stiles shot back. “We lock the doors. Close the blinds. Keep on as we were.” 

“For how long?” 

“Not much longer. I’m sure of it. They’ll get bored eventually, or it’ll get through their thick skulls that I’m not interested.”

Or, maybe they wouldn’t, and Stiles would be dealing with them for months, until he left for college next fall. Either way, he wouldn’t be the cause of a pack war. There was no way he would let that happen. 

Stiles’ brief eye contact with Derek showed him that Derek’s eyes held that special, tired cast that meant he knew what Stiles was thinking, and he agreed. Derek was exceptionally talented at looking simultaneously resigned, righteous and guilty. 

Stiles was pretty sure that that guilt was the reason Derek was spending so much time teaching him how to fight dirty. It was the Hale family, the Hale pack and their disagreement with Dave’s father that had indirectly caused Stiles’ assault. When he’d told Stiles to be mad at anyone but himself, it hadn’t been a suggestion. It had been a request. He’d wanted Stiles to be angry at him. 

Stiles didn’t mind that Derek was kind of using him to self-flagellate, because it was better than Derek going off to some abandoned cabin for solitary penitence. At least this way, Derek could feel like he was doing something useful in reparation, instead of festering in finely-honed guilt. Stiles also knew that there wasn’t any point in trying to convince Derek of his own innocence once he’d decided he was guilty. If that was possible, Derek would have forgiven himself for the deaths of his family years ago. 

“I don’t like this,” his dad said, every inch The Sheriff.

“None of us do,” Derek replied. 

“This is crossing over into my jurisdiction, Derek. I think I’ve been more than reasonable in the amount of crimes I haven’t reported because of the whole supernatural element, but a stranger showing up at our house, after dark, and sending harassing texts that imply that they’re in seeing distance of _my son’s bedroom--”_

“Dad.” Stiles’ voice snapped in the quiet room. “This isn’t Derek’s fault.” 

“Well, whose is it then?” 

“Whose do you want it to be? Mine? For smelling like the pack bitch all the time?” 

If the silence was tense before, it was taut as a garrotte after that. His father looked stricken, his mouth hanging slightly open in his shock. Allison stepped closer to him, like a bomb-defuser starting a hard day’s work. “Stiles, this isn’t your fault--”

His irritation sparked. “I _know_ that. I know it wasn’t my fucking fault. That doesn’t mean that we can throw the blame around in this room, because it doesn’t belong to anyone here.”

His dad’s leg hit the plush arm of the sofa as he rushed across the room to put his hands on Stiles’ shoulders. He swallowed hard, and stammered out, “I didn’t mean…”

“I know.” 

Stiles let himself be pulled into a tight Stilinski Hug, Jovial Back-Slap sold separately. He accepted the not-quite-spoken apology by squeezing back, and all was forgiven. Over his dad’s shoulder, he could see Derek’s gratitude and regret pouring to the floor from the invisible hole in his chest that housed the countless hurts of his shitty life.

Stiles and his dad both cleared their throats when the hug was over, and Stiles told the pack, “You can all go home now. I shouldn’t have flipped out, we’re good here.”

They all wore doubtful expressions, but filed out with no argument. Well, some argument, on Scott’s part. Between the Sheriff and the Alpha, they convinced him to go quietly. There wasn’t anything he could do there, besides keep the Sheriff awake at the end of a long day. 

**

That night, he woke screaming from one of his worst nightmares to date. There was the usual stuff: The wound on his back, open and oozing, becoming necrotic while he wasn’t watching. Same old, same old. He was more terrified of the new parts. In the dream, he was torn away from his pack, gripped by hot hands and blood-filled mouths. Voices hissed sick things in his ear that he couldn’t remember when he woke up, but they’d turned his stomach when he’d dreamed them. 

His dad ran in at the sound of his screaming and avoided Stiles’ thrashing hands to pull him to his chest, murmuring words in his ear to ground him. Stiles hadn’t even woken up fully until his dad placed a cool, comforting palm over the skin of his back, and he realized he’d been expecting a sizzle. 

His breath sawed out of him, not quite sobbing, but close. His dad was caught in an awkward perch on the edge of the bed, but Stiles couldn’t make his arms let go for him to move. His dad tried to keep up a steady, soothing rub on his back to settle him, but Stiles’ shivers intensified every time his hand strayed toward the bite mark so eventually, he just rested his heavy palm on Stiles’ hair until Stiles was exhausted enough to let his head hit the pillow. 

**

The next morning was a Saturday, and Stiles’ dad was planning on spending the entire day at home. Breakfast was quiet and tense, neither of them willing to bring up the nightmare of last night. Stiles noticed his dad opening his mouth and drawing breath to speak a couple times, but he never managed to speak his mind. 

However much Stiles hated the gifts on the porch, they made a welcome distraction this morning. There was a box from a local jewellers and a box of fancy, awful-smelling cheese, but Stiles’ eyes were drawn to the railing, where, in the same place the thyme had been left, there was a little piece of wood. Stiles picked it up and turned it over in his hands. It was a bird. Crudely carved, obviously by hand. Or by claw. It was a little misshapen, and the only detail was the pair of wings on the sides, but the smooth texture of the wood felt nice on Stiles’ thumb. He hadn’t realized his hand had been shaking until they closed around the figure in his palm. 

“Fuck,” he said, under his breath, and leaned his head against the wooden beam next to the steps. He was jittery. The wind was blowing, and instead of enjoying the clean air, he was twitching with nerves at every rustle or scratch of leaves, wondering if it was one of his admirers. A bird called overhead, and Stiles took the one in his hand in between his thumb and forefinger and smoothed it in a circle at the base of his thumb on the opposite hand. The subtle grain of the wood tickled, but it a nice way. 

He almost dropped it when his dad opened the front door behind him. He put his hand in the pocket of his pajamas to hide it. His dad looked down at that day’s offerings, then stepped over them, like Stiles had, and came over to stand beside his son. Stiles leaned into his dad’s hand on his shoulder and felt the tension and twitchiness ebb a bit. 

“This can’t go on, Stiles,” his dad said, and Stiles found himself nodding. “Either the pack gets rid of these people, or I will.”

They shared an awkward side hug, and his dad started clearing away the detritus on the welcome mat. Stiles left him to it, running upstairs to his room with the bird carving burning a hole in his pocket. He placed it on his windowsill, next to the thyme, which was looking more and more wilted.

He had no idea who’d brought it. He couldn’t think of a single person in the whole group who would take the time to carve a silly bird out of wood, or tie a bunch of herbs together with string. It went against everything they’d assumed he would want. To them, he was a decadent, but cheaply made dessert. Easily purchased if you have the cash. He wasn’t a fine, rare wine, the kind you search out, bargain for, spend time and effort trying to add to your collection.

He hated all of them. Hated their gifts. It made no sense that he would like these two. They pleased him more than a simple object should be able to. Like they were made of more than animal, vegetable or mineral. He decided not to think about it. There was a chance that someone who went to school with him had heard about the gifts and decided to add their two cents. Besides, he wasn’t Persephone, these weren’t pomegranate seeds. Keeping two small tokens from the pile of useless gifts wasn’t going to trap him in hell. He hoped.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles spent the whole weekend feeling antsy and cabin-fevered. He’d been in the house since Friday afternoon, and he and his father were just about ready to kill each other from the uncommonly long proximity. The resentment he felt toward the the Bad News Bears (or Wolves, he supposed) was at its peak by Sunday morning, and he decided that even though it still gave him the creeps to go out of the house with the new knowledge of the level of surveillance they were willing to go to, he had to take a walk, or a drive, or a freaking razor scoot or he’d go insane. To hell with the potential danger of going anywhere alone. He needed to be alone in his head in a place that wasn't the four walls of his bedroom. Or his kitchen. Or his living room. Pretty much any of the walls that made up his house. 

He went out the back door with his keys in hand, intending on picking up some groceries they probably could have gone a few more days without. When he rounded the corner of the house, the group of teenagers (five of them, it looked like) standing on his porch twisted their heads toward him with a kind of precision and perkiness that reminded him of synchronized swimmers. In the split second he had before his nervous system started panicking, he was treated to the mental image of the entire pack of them, in beta form, twirling and back-stroking in matching one-piece bathing suits and swim caps. 

“Morning, Stiles,” Chad said, predictably. He seemed to be the elected spokesperson of the pack, whenever they tried a group effort. Stiles had wondered before whether it had been decided by a vote, fangs at dawn, or whoever had drawn the short straw.

Stiles grunted eloquently in reply and made a beeline for his jeep. He hadn’t even reached for the door handle when a beefy arm snaked out and pressed against the window so firmly that Stiles knew it would only be embarrassing if he tried to open it. He looked up at the guy who belonged to the arm, and it was Strong Beardy Silent Type from his chem class. He was the only one who hadn’t yet tried to talk to Stiles one-on-one. Unless he’d been one of the many unknown numbers his phone kept chiming for. 

Strong Silent spoke over Chad, who hopped down the three stairs like Stiles would be impressed by his parkour moves. “He said good morning, Stiles.” 

“I heard him.” 

“You aren’t going to say it back?” 

“Wasn’t planning to.” 

“That’s rude.”

“Is it? I find trespassing on private property to be pretty rude, but I wasn’t going to mention it.” 

Strong Silent laughed, a rich, warm sound that paired well with his smile. Stiles was pretty sure his thick beard hid a charming dimple. In another circumstance, another world, Stiles might have found this man attractive. Out of all the new students who’d pestered him, Stiles had found him to be the least objectionable. He’d entertained the thought that maybe this guy been the one to leave the thyme and the bird, and the little bottle of coriander oil that had joined them on his window sill, (It meant “hidden worth.” Stiles loved it, even though it smelled like ass) but Stiles could see past him to the porch railing, and nothing new had been placed there, even though there were new offerings to be had. 

“Stiles, come on. Enough of this.” Strong Silent took his hand off the car door and took a step even closer to him. Stiles took a quick step back, and wiggled his keys into place between his knuckles, prepared to put Derek’s training to use, even though five against one was shitty odds. “It’s been, what? Weeks? Playing hard to get is only amusing for so long.” 

“Is that what you think I’ve been doing? Playing? This is you tugging my pigtails, and me pretending not to like it?”

A girl’s voice from behind Chad called, “I’d tug on your hair for real, if you asked nicely.”

“God, will you cut that out?” He snapped at her. “You are all so freaking terrible at innuendo, it’s embarrassing.”

“Do you want us to convince you?” Strong Silent cut in. “Is that it? You want us to paint a picture? Here’s a nice picture for you: You, living in the lap of luxury as my mate. Favoured by the alpha, given everything you could possibly think of wanting, all for the small price of the occasional fuck with the most respected member of the pack. Something we have on pretty good authority that you give away for free right now. Where is the drawback, here?” 

Stiles’ face and neck burned with rage and the growing feeling that he was losing control of this situation. “The drawback is that I get to be treated like dirt until your alpha gets tired of me and I get kicked to the curb.”

“Naturally. But that’s the thing. You just have to work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. You seem to have lots of practice. How long have you been with this pack? Two years? Three? You’ve managed to keep this alpha entertained, why not mine? Or any of theirs? You’d be cared for. You’d never come to harm as long as you were with us.” His arm snaked out and he flicked a finger down Stiles’ cheek before he could lean away from it. “Our little pet human,” he said, wistfully.

 _Pet human_. The words brought up images he wasn’t expecting. They echoed in his ears as his mind provided him with an annotated slide show of hands around his throat, fingers pushed into his mouth, his chest pinned to a scratchy mattress. It didn’t really register that the cold, hard thing he felt pressed up to his side was his jeep, and he’d been nudged there by gentle hands. He was too consumed by memories he’d thought buried in the everyday tick-tock and hustle of a life surrounded by a potentially hostile almost-pack that had its claws hobbled by only the inconvenience spilling blood would cause. 

Angry voices quivered through the panic to his eardrums, like a siren’s song through beeswax. Concerning, but not enough to tempt him to resurface. He could recognize Derek through the haze, though. Stiles had vague recollections from the past 30 seconds or so of being lowered to the ground. If he concentrated, he could feel the jeep’s hubcap digging into his back. 

The voices continued to be angry as Stiles struggled to even out his breath, but they also seemed to be moving farther away. Stiles blinked his eyes quickly to scrub away images of darkened warehouses and was finally able to look past Derek’s legs (wide, offensive stance, ready for a takedown) to the retreating backs of the five teenagers. 

_No_ , a still-functional part of him said. They were not allowed to walk away, not this time. He was through with not engaging. Clearly, ignoring the problem was not going to make it go away. 

He stumbled to his feet, knocking his hip against the car hard enough to make him gasp, which had the added benefit of burning his airway clear of the panicked mush that had blocked it. 

“Hey,” he yelled, then took a few shaky steps forward on legs that felt like a newborn colt’s. 

They all turned back and looked at him, including Derek, who had yet to relax his fighting posture. “Listen up. This is me, saying no to your offer. Any of them. I’m not playing, or teasing, or waiting for someone to call my bluff and get me a bigger or better dowry. This is not the middle ages. Listen to my heartbeat, and tell me if I’m lying. It’s never going to happen,” he pronounced slowly and clearly, knowing his heart went on steadily, without a blip.

None of the werewolves said anything. They just stood at the edge of the Stilinski property’s front lawn, staring with blank, assessing eyes, like children of the damn corn. Then, Strong Silent nodded, and they faded away, slipping through Stiles’ neighbours’ backyards until they were out of sight. Stiles knew they weren’t out of earshot, though. He watched silently until Derek’s body relaxed by slow degrees. Stiles took a step toward him, but his knees decided that they’d had quite enough, and gave out on him. 

Derek’s arms wrapped around his waist before he got anywhere close to the tar of his driveway, and he supported Stiles for the couple of feet between them and the side of the jeep. Stiles was steady enough to be able to stand when he was propped up against the door.

Every time he had a panic attack, it struck him anew how absolutely stupid his body was for having them. It seemed ridiculous to him that in the history of evolution, the human psyche hadn’t yet figured out how to prevent an adrenaline surge so powerful that it restricted his breathing, made him hella nauseous, and dialed up his vulnerability factor by a concerning amount. He purposefully didn’t wonder what might have happened if Derek hadn’t been there. _Not_ thinking about that, however, made him wonder why he _had_ been, so he asked him. 

Derek didn’t answer for a minute. It was awkward as hell, because Stiles had become hyper-aware that Derek was standing way closer than he normally did, outside of their defense lessons, and he was obviously choosing his words with great care, so it was probably something big. 

“There’s a new store open on Main St.” 

Stiles blinked in surprise. “Yeah, the frozen yogurt place. Lydia was complaining to me that they’re poaching on Pinkberry’s territory.” 

“I have a coupon,” Derek said, and patted his front pocket awkwardly. “I figured you’d be getting tired of being inside, so I thought you might want to go with me.” 

“Seriously?” Stiles’ brain stalled at the idea that he’d been saved from his ongoing sexual harassment by frozen yogurt. 

“It’s a two-for-one thing. It’s basically free to get another one, but I can’t eat that much.” 

A gurgle of hysterical laughter erupted from Stiles’ throat. “Derek Hale, bargain hunter extraordinaire.” 

“Do you want to go or not?” Derek grumbled, but Stiles saw his stiff upper lip tremble on the edge of amusement. 

Stiles breathed out slowly and tapped the metal at this back with his fingers. “Yeah, why not.” 

Stiles was steady enough to drive, but when he unlocked the car door, Derek put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. 

“Your dad’s napping, but you should tell him where you’re going anyway. He’ll worry if you’re not there when he gets up.”

If Derek thought Stiles couldn’t hear the judginess in his tone, he was mistaken, but Stiles left a note on the kitchen counter.

The frozen yogurt place was packed, since this was only the second or third weekend since it had opened. Looking at him, Stiles knew a stranger would have assumed that Derek would get something plain and load it up with healthy fruits, but Stiles knew better. Derek had a sweet tooth, so he liked things staggeringly unhealthy, but simple. Derek’s philosophy was that if you put a wide variety of stuff on, whether it was on pizza, ice cream or cookies, it wouldn’t be as enjoyable. He got chocolate yogurt with caramel sauce on it, and nothing else. Stiles ignored Derek’s sage advice and loaded his coffee yogurt with as much stuff as he could fit in the paper cup. 

They paid for their dessert--with Derek’s coupon, which was creased and frayed from being in a pocket for a long time--and got back into the jeep. Derek gave Stiles directions to a cliff on the edge of the preserve that looked over the whole of Beacon Hills and they sat on the hood of the jeep. 

“You sure I don’t have to get two hits in before I start?” Stiles teased, his spoon poised inches above his sugary monstrosity. 

“Just eat the damn yogurt.” 

It was such a normal Sunday afternoon thing to do. Hanging out in a quiet spot with a good friend and junk food. It seemed surreal that not even an hour before, Stiles had been so overwhelmed by fear and panic that his body had shut down in the presence of his enemies. 

“Thanks,” Stiles said, then cleared the dairy fuzz from his throat. “For today. I’m glad you were there.” 

Derek shrugged and put his empty cup on the hood next to Stiles’. “No problem. You would have been alright without me.”

“Are you kidding?” Stiles burst out, bitterness coating the back of his tongue. “I was useless out there. One stupid comment that reminds me of--” his voice gave out, but he growled and pushed on, “Of _them_ , and I lose my shit on the front lawn, with my fan club in attendance. It’s completely fucked up.” 

Derek’s hand rose like it had a life of it’s own and hovered over Stiles’ knee for a second before it decided against making contact. “It’s fine. No one expects you to get over something like that so quickly. Honestly, you’re more functional now than anyone has a right to demand you to be.”

Stiles jumped down from the hood of the car and took a few jerky steps closer to the stand of trees beside the dirt road they’d come in on, his feet smarting from the gentle impact because the circulation in his legs was still coming back. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and squeezed his fists into the thin, lint-covered fabric inside. 

Behind him, he heard the metallic zing of the button on Derek’s jeans sliding off the car and his footsteps coming closer. Stiles didn’t turn around, too preoccupied keeping the stinging pain in his chest and throat at a manageable level, but the words he’d been keeping buried for so long decided that the breakable tissue wasn’t enough to keep them inside. 

“I hate that everyone knows,” he said, low and wavering. “All of them. They’re trying so hard, but they saw it, and they all look at me like I’m going to collapse. Whenever they do that, I can feel them remembering it, and then I remember, and as long as I can see it happening in my head every day, I can’t forget.” 

By the end of his blast of words, his hands had reached up to tug at his hair, hard enough to hurt. As soon as he spat out the last word on the end of a too-shallow breath, Derek’s hand grabbed his arm in a gentle, but inexorable grip, and then they were hugging and Derek’s voice was warm and reassuring in his ear. 

“You will. Not completely. But someday, you won’t be reminded of it by a million little things you do in an average week. It’ll fade to the background. It’ll be a part of you and your history, but it won’t be all of you. Just a small piece. I promise.”

Derek’s skin was warm though both their clothes. Stiles had once thought that werewolves had higher body temperatures as a result of their superhuman mojo, but Scott had the same cold feet and hands he always had. There was a chance it was a born wolf thing, but Stiles liked to think that it was just Derek. His face and voice threw off cold waves of _don’t care_ and _don’t touch_ , but in reality, he was _so warm._

With the solidness of Derek’s body against his own, Stiles realized something about himself. He was completely gone on Derek Hale. It had taken years, but he could finally admit to himself that the leaping his chest did whenever he saw Derek wasn’t just happiness to see his friend. 

It was a confusing feeling, because love felt great, most of the time. Stiles already knew that. Even through countless rejections, imagining himself to be in love with Lydia made him giddy and high, and his teenaged emotions warm and squidgy. However, as with Lydia, that feeling didn’t last all the time, and the crash down to earth when that love wasn’t returned gave him whiplash every single time. He skidded and bounced to a crash landing, true to form, but hugged Derek harder until the second the embrace started to slip beyond comfort into something else. 

When they parted, their faces were both dry, but the moment had scraped them both raw, and the frozen yogurt adventure was unanimously declared to be over. Their empty cups ended up on the floor of the jeep with all the other fast food wrappers and Stiles started down the long, winding path to the main road that would lead them, more or less to Derek’s house. There wasn’t really any path that would take them in a straight line, so he chose the road with the prettiest scenery. 

They were back to that companionable silence again, the one Stiles only seemed to be able to find with Derek and his dad. While they drove, Stiles was able to digest what they’d talked about. 

When Lydia had offered to be his sounding board, he hadn’t even considered the fact that another person in the pack had also experienced something like he had. Derek’s advice had come from knowing what Stiles was going through, and it was for that reason that he didn’t wipe it out of his mind like he had the information from the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre pamphlets his dad had not-so-subtly left in his room days ago. He filed it away for further investigation instead. 

They arrived at the house and Derek lifted a hand at the door before he went back inside. Stiles waved back, then sped away before his rising heart rate and watering eyes could worry Derek. He got a hold of himself quickly by taking deep breaths and giving his tear ducts a stern talking to. Stiles knew he needed to get over his angst fast. Getting upset over his unrequited love during every pack meeting wouldn’t be fair to Derek, who already had so much to worry about, including keeping the rest of Stiles’ issues in check. 

They both had baggage, and Stiles refused to add more of his load to Derek’s. 

** 

That night, Stiles woke up way before his alarm. His stomach was queasy, and his legs were sore from tension, but the dream hadn’t been a bad one. He hadn’t been running in terror, but in exhilaration. He’d felt the pull of the moon and the heartbeats of his pack members, and he’d wanted to run, so he had. He’d raced alongside his pack and his mate for nothing more than the joy of moving through the part of the forest that was theirs. 

He’d had fur, and the tendons that were stiff and short as a human had lengthened and stretched gloriously as he joined in the same call he’d heard every month from the sidelines. His alpha’s howl had shivered along every nerve and bone and would have pulled the sound out of him if he hadn’t wanted to give it up with all his soul. 

Stiles wiped the moisture from his cheeks and curled into himself against the phantom sorrow left over from realizing that it wasn’t real. 


	9. Chapter 9

At school on Monday, Chad and Ashley weren’t in English, and CJ and what’s-his-name weren’t in calc. By lunchtime, Stiles’ pack confirmed that only four of the werewolves remained of the original ten. Apparently, some of them had taken Stiles’ explicit refusal to heart, which was encouraging. 

There were still a few desperate ones left, but even they seemed to be losing steam. When Stiles got home that day, he went through that morning’s offerings and estimated that the net worth of his gifts had dropped by at least 75%.

They continued to dwindle as the remaining four contestants on the awkward dating reality show of Stiles’ life were voted off. By Friday morning, their territory was their own again, and the tension that they’d all been carrying dissipated at last. It was pretty anticlimactic, really. It wasn’t like Stiles had been hoping for a bloody showdown, but he’d sort of been expecting one. 

Every day, though, a new herb or flower--or, once, a bottle of pink salt--had been left on his porch railing. Stiles gravitated to it every morning when he went out to check if the welcome mat was finally clear. There was a part of him that dreaded going out on Saturday morning to see that there was nothing there, which was why it took him until after it had gotten dark to convince himself to look. He’d considered asking the last four werewolves which of them had been leaving these small tokens, but he’d decided he didn’t want to know. None of them seemed a likely choice. Especially not Brittany, who’d been the last one to give up and vacate Bob’s shabby motel. 

Stiles closed the door behind him, even though his dad was in the living room and wouldn’t care much about whether the gift was there or not, given that Stiles hadn’t told him about them. He was pretty sure his dad wouldn’t be thrilled if he knew Stiles was keeping any of his haul, even if it was only a leaf or a flower. His dad wasn’t the only one who didn’t know, either. Stiles had decided that way too much of his personal life had been shared with the pack already, so he kept it for himself. 

Stiles realized his hand was still stuck to the doorknob, and he hadn’t looked over to the railing yet. He laughed self-deprecatingly under his breath and told himself to stop procrastinating the inevitable. 

When he finally looked, a spot of red jumped out at him. A cluster of pointed leaves with some bright red berries attached was lying in the same spot they always did. Stiles picked it up immediately and ran his fingers along the dips and points of the green leaves. 

Whoever had been leaving these gifts wasn’t part of the visiting pack. If they were, he wouldn’t be holding this one. They would have cut off when the last interloper left Beacon Hills. Stiles couldn’t hold back his relieved smile. He must have looked like an idiot, standing on his porch at 9 in the evening, grinning ear to ear and fondling some berries. 

He tried again, like he had every morning, to figure out who could be leaving them. It was likely that they went to BHHS, if they knew that Stiles had been getting courting gifts on the regular. They maybe knew something about herbs, or maybe they just had access to the internet like Stiles. They might even be some kind of non-human, because neither Stiles nor his dad had seen or heard anyone leaving something, so they could have possessed supernatural sneaking skills. 

But that was a lot of mights and maybes. Stiles still had no idea who would leave him thyme and sage, or today’s berries, which looked like they’d jumped out of a festive advertisement. He was pretty sure that he was holding holly berries in his hands. 

Stiles was just about to put them into his pocket for the trip upstairs when an image from a book he’d read jumped into his head. It was an illustration in the chapter about werewolf courting rituals and mating habits. He’d been mainly focused on blushing about the second part, and had barely glanced at the caption of the picture, but he remembered that it had said something about popular gifts during the courting process. 

So, the mystery gift giver could be a werewolf. And if it was, they might be from Stiles’ own pack, because he was positive that all of the other werewolves had left town. Stiles frowned and thought over the single people in the pack. Lydia, sworn off men until she got into MIT. Isaac, staunchly heterosexual, and not Stiles’ biggest fan. Derek...

“Hey, Little Red.” 

Stiles whipped around, jumping a foot in the air at the sound of a stranger’s voice. For a moment, disappointment curled in his gut, because he thought that the pack wasn’t gone like they’d thought. Two more of them had stuck around to put plants on Stiles’ porch and use cliched villain pick up lines on him. 

But then the two dark shapes stepped into the circle of harsh light cast by the bulb mounted on the wall. Stiles recognized them, but not from school. They were two of the blue-eyed betas from Dave’s pack. One of them was the guy who’d roughed him up. 

Stiles took a step back, calculating whether he could reach the jeep before they reached him, and if it would keep them away for any length of time. 

“No running,” the one on the left growled. “We could still take this inside.” 

Inside, to where his dad was watching Family Guy reruns and pretending that he didn’t find them absolutely hilarious. Stiles swallowed hard and held still. 

For a while, none of them moved, beyond the restless curling of the werewolves’ fingers. They were omegas now. No longer quiet and biddable, but crazed without an alpha to anchor them. 

Chad had told him that he’d heard of Stiles through two omegas. Stiles hadn’t stopped to think at any point about why a pair of alpha-less wolves would visit so many packs, spreading nasty rumours. They’d probably been searching for a new alpha. Evidently, they hadn’t found one yet. Stiles would bet the colour of their eyes was a bit off-putting for most packs. 

“Good to see you again, Stiles,” the bigger one on the right purred. “We’ve been letting everyone know how nice it was to meet you the first time.” 

The other one growled again. “You still stink of an alpha. A desperate one. You think you’re too good for the Hale alpha?”

“No.” Stiles said. “Just too good for yours.” 

The werewolf’s eyes flashed cold blue, and the prominent brow ridge of their species rippled into existence. “You are nothing,” he spat, through a mouthful of sharp teeth. “Your pathetic little pack was nothing compared to ours. Compared to _him_. But you use magic and trickery instead of real strength and now he’s gone.” His voice cracked, and his partner whined restlessly, and Stiles felt a small, unwilling pang of sympathy for these desperate orphans. A very tiny one. “He’s dead because of you. So we came to settle your debt.”

With a quick jab of a clawed fist, the porch light exploded and the werewolves advanced. 

Stiles was able to get a few hits in. He was proud of himself for that, and he thought Derek would be too. It wasn’t a fair fight though, and two werewolves could take down one human pretty quickly. They pinned him up against the wall of his house by his arms, and before Stiles could get his breath back from the impact, the large one punched his claws into the meat of Stiles’ stomach. 

It hurt like hell. Stiles had been scratched, torn up, beaten and raped before, but nothing had ever hurt as deeply and vividly as this. 

“Huh.” One of the werewolves said. Stiles wasn’t with it enough to tell which. “You really didn’t change. We thought you were maybe just taking your time. Oh, well. Makes our job easier.” 

The omega ripped his claws out of Stiles’ stomach, sideways, instead of straight out, so he could do as much damage as he possible. Stiles screamed from the pain and the sound of rending flesh and slid down the wall without the twin grips on his arms. He could dimly hear the sound of their footsteps on the porch as they walked away, leaving him to his fate. His vision hazed with agony, but he saw the blurred outline of a moving shape appear out of nowhere and tackle one of the omegas to the ground. He wanted to stay aware, but he couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t concentrate on anything beyond the clench of his hands to his stomach, and the sticky, hot slick of his blood pouring out of him. 

“Stiles? What’s wrong, why did you--Stiles!”

His dad was with him. Stiles let out a broken sob of relief. He felt his hands being moved around, then there was fabric against his wound, getting soaking though immediately. He felt a scraping, then pressure on his back, and he opened his eyes again (when had he closed them?) and he was on his back.

“Dad,” he choked. The firm push of both their hands on his abdomen hurt, and he wanted it to stop, but he wasn’t sure whether that would hurt less. Stiles could feel the wetness of his own blood pooling in the back of his shirt. Too much of it. Somewhere in a higher-thinking part of his brain that wasn’t freaking out over having been stabbed in the fucking stomach, Stiles knew he was bleeding out. He was going to die. 

There was a loud snarl from the grass a few feet away, then a high, cut-off yell, followed by a snap of thick bone. In the next second--or maybe longer, Stiles was losing time--Derek was there too, leaning over him. 

Derek put his hands on Stiles’ face, stroking his cheeks with thumbs that were wet, probably with blood. Stiles couldn’t tell whose. “Stiles--” 

Stiles’ dad snapped at Derek, “Hold on to this. I’m calling dispatch now. We’ll get help.” 

“No.” Stiles took his hand away from the mess of his dad’s overshirt just as Derek added his. He grabbed his dad’s arm right before he went for the cell phone in his pocket. “I don’t want Derek to get in trouble. And there’s no point. The average--” The borrowed breath Stiles had been speaking with ran out, and it took him a while to get some back. “The average human body can--can withstand up to--”

“God dammit, Stiles, stop!” Stiles’ dad yanked his arm out of his weak grip, then seemed to regret it, and patted Stiles’ shoulder with a hand that shook. “I am getting you some help, we can fix this.” 

It was the Sheriff of Beacon Hills who stood up and took out his phone to make the call. Stiles lifted up both his arms to grab onto Derek’s jacket. “Stop him. It’s too late. Please.” Stiles yanked the fabric in his grip tighter, then cried out when it jarred his body, lighting up with pain the areas that had started to go numb. His words devolved to mumbled pleading. He was vaguely aware of a conversation going on over his head, then his dad’s hands returning to the fabric on his stomach that had soaked up its fill. Stiles was starting to lose his grasp of consciousness, so he took one more stabbing, burning breath. 

“Derek, listen to me.” Stiles closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of Derek’s hands slipping underneath his head to support his neck. He knew what he wanted to say, had known since the second he’d felt his life’s blood on his hands, but his tongue was clumsy and he wasn’t sure how loud he was speaking. The roaring in his ears was drowning him out. “I want you to bite me. I know it won’t work, but it won’t hurt me, and I want to be…” Pack. He wanted to be pack, fully and completely, with the bloody teeth marks to prove it. 

“Stiles, I…” When Stiles opened his eyes, all he could see was the diffused glow of red alpha eyes, and he felt his clock ticking down. 

“Do it now. Please. I love…” He coughed, and gagged on the smell of blood. “I want--”

“Do as he asks,” his dad said, his voice cracked and drowned by his tears. 

Derek swiped his thumb over Stiles’ cheek one final time, then leaned down to Stiles’ neck. The pain of the bite was the last thing he was aware of before he let the darkness swallow him up.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles was floating again. Maybe. He felt like he was in a cloud, and everything smelled delicious. It was like the comfort of the best homemade meal his mother had ever made, but instead of the food, there was salty, earthy, fresh and clean skin-scent to bury his nose in. 

He opened his eyes, and the feeling of being weightlessly suspended in open space receded. He rubbed his cheek cautiously against the white pillowcase under his cheek and blinked to adjust his eyes to the light pouring into the room. 

He knew this room. He’d picked these sheets when he’d found out that Derek had been sleeping on ones he’d gotten from the bargain bin that had a thread count of about five. Derek’s room in the pack house had the biggest windows and the most natural light, and by the pale colour, Stiles guessed it was morning. 

Stiles took another deep breath, and the scent of the pack overwhelmed him. A hundred small notes that he’d never known he was missing made up a bouquet of everyone he cared for most in the world. It was intoxicating, and Stiles barely resisted rolling around in the big bed to stir up more of Derek’s epithelials to make it even more potent.

Starting with his hands, he flexed and tweaked every muscle and bone in his body, checking for the injuries he hadn’t expected to heal from. He wiggled a hand between his stomach and the mattress and felt only smooth, undamaged skin, still warm and humid from sleep. His relief was dizzying, even though he was lying flat, and with the world spinning, he flipped over onto his back and pressed the heels of his hands to his stinging eyes...Which he was pretty sure would glow gold if he concentrated hard enough. 

It had worked. He was a werewolf. He’d never been so certain of anything, even if the massive hint of no longer having a giant hole in his abdomen didn’t give it away. He waited for the disgust to set in, the sick sludge of violation he’d stewed in after Dave had bitten him. It didn’t come. His memory was hazy about what had happened the night he’d almost died, but he remembered asking for the bite, and he didn’t regret it. All he felt was happiness and the thrum of awareness that he was pretty sure was the close presence of his pack. 

His _pack_. None of them had ever made him feel less than part of the group, but there had been so many little moments that he’d wished he could communicate on the instinctual level they seemed to be able to. Sometimes he’d felt more as if he’d had his senses dampened, instead of them having supernatural abilities. 

“You awake?” 

Stiles dragged his palms down his cheeks, then patted down his body to check if he was covered. There was a sheet over top of him, thank god, and he felt bunched cotton underneath, so he was probably wearing boxers. He sat up in the bed, and his stomach didn’t even twinge with the memory of a healed injury. Pretty potent stuff, that werewolf healing. 

“Yeah.” He had definitely awakened, in more ways than one. He could smell Derek’s nervousness, but also his relief. He could hear the jumping rhythm of their heart beats. But best of all, he could feel the gentle pull of his alpha, like a wave tugging him out to sea. He could resist, easily. But why would he want to?

Derek entered the room slowly and sat down on the other side of the bed. Most of the massive mattress was between them, and Stiles wanted to close the distance so badly, but Derek was treating him cautiously, so he thought he’d better hold himself back. He wasn’t going to wait forever, though. 

“So, I’m alive, then,” Stiles said, when Derek let the living silence go on for too long. 

Derek flinched, and wouldn’t meet Stiles’ eyes. “Yes. I don’t know why. Neither does Deaton.” 

“Huh. I think I do.” 

Derek’s head snapped up from where it had been bowed, looking at his fingers tugging at threads on the duvet. “Really?” 

“Yeah. I mean, it would make sense. My theory, I mean. It would explain why Dave’s bite did nothing, but yours had all the expected side effects.” Stiles paused, suddenly losing all the confidence he’d had that the bite had taken. “I _am_ qualified to be an extra in the Twilight reboot, right?” 

Derek growled and launched himself up from the bed. “How are you so flip about this? You never wanted this. The thought of it made you sick, I remember it. I wouldn’t have bitten you if I’d thought you’d…” Derek knuckled his eye sockets hard enough that Stiles blinked in sympathy. “I thought you were…”

His voice died off into an animal whimper, and his hands dropped to his sides, but he still wouldn’t look at Stiles. 

“I thought so too,” Stiles said, gently. “I was sure I was done for, and I didn’t ask you to do it to save my life. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want the bite.” 

Derek’s fist came down on the sturdy dresser, hard enough to make Stiles--and the cheap picture frame on the top, with their pack’s faces smiling out of it--jump. “Don’t lie to me, Stiles. I’ve heard your nightmares. Even from outside your house, they were loud enough to hear how terrified you were of the possibility.” 

Stiles blinked. “What were you doing outside of my house?”

“Did you really think I’d leave you unprotected when there were other werewolves out there watching you?” Derek finally turned around and looked at Stiles, and disbelief made the corners of his eyes and mouth crinkle, far more than the skin of a 20-something with healing powers should. 

Stiles swallowed hard. “Thanks. I owe you one.” 

“No. You don’t. I’ll never be able to pay you back for my mistake.” 

“What mistake?” 

“Turning you. You didn’t want it--” 

“Derek, listen to me.” Stiles crawled forward on the bed, the sheet tangling around his thighs in his haste to get closer so he could try and ease the tense curve of Derek’s back by lifting the weight of his guilt. He didn’t make it all the way, but he knelt at the edge of the mattress with his hand outstretched, palm up. “I wanted the bite. I just didn’t want it from him. I wanted it from you. You’re my alpha.”

Derek’s eyes flashed red as he reached his hand out to hover over Stiles’. Stiles felt his own glow in response, and it made him gasp. No one had ever told him that he’d be able to feel his eyes changing colour. Of all the physiological changes that occurred when the wolf came out to play, that was one of the more subtle, so he supposed it was no wonder it was overlooked. But Stiles marveled at the feeling. It was like a lamp coming on, or an electric switch. It wasn’t a painful zap, just a buzzing awareness that hadn’t been there before. 

“I’m your alpha,” Derek said, softly, sliding his palm higher on Stiles wrist to encircle his pulse with his fingers.

“Of course. That’s why I didn’t change, I guess. I’m very stubborn, Derek. I wanted to wait, so I did. Maybe my spark or whatever helped, but if anyone was going to say fuck you to Dave and prevent the change through sheer force of will, it would be me.” 

Derek wheezed a disbelieving laugh, then let go of Stiles’ arm and sat down on the bed again. Stiles’ wrist felt cold, and the beat of his blood receded from the forefront of his conscious mind. He sat back on his heels, and was all of a sudden hyperaware that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He wrapped his arms around his own torso, and gripped his shoulders. The stretch of his back reminded him of the injury he thought he’d bear the mark of permanently. 

“Derek,” he breathed. He unwrapped his arms and reached between his shoulder blades, but his hand froze just above the skin, like a magnet being repelled. “Is it--”

“It’s gone. I wasn’t sure if the change would do anything to it, since it was mostly healed anyway, but I guess the scarring wasn’t finished.” 

The breath Stiles had been holding burst out of him in a long exhale, and his fingers finally connected with the smooth, unmarred skin. He slumped, and the room started to spin again, so he flopped over on his back, suddenly exhausted. His eyes slipped shut while he waited for his equilibrium to reset. The room was bright enough beyond his eyelids that he didn’t see darkness, but a dull golden-red. It was all one colour, and he hadn’t realized how overwhelming the room had been until he’d removed sight from the equation. Werewolf senses took some getting used to, apparently. 

He breathed through it, and was seriously considering ignoring Derek’s presence and falling asleep when the smells he’d been sorting out in his mind suddenly made sense. He blinked his eyes open and turned his head to where the scent was strongest, and discovered his suspicions were correct. The cardboard shoebox he’d kept all of his plant gifts in was sitting on Derek’s bedside table. It was so fragrant Stiles had no idea how it had taken him so long to notice it. 

“You asked for it,” Derek said, and Stiles startled. 

“What?” 

“Last night, when you were turning, sometimes you’d get close to lucid, and you asked for the box. Your dad didn’t know why, he didn’t even know you had it, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.” 

“Oh.” Stiles sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He shivered from the tepid air in the bedroom, then Derek unzipped his sweater and offered it to him. It was still warm from being on Derek’s body, and Stiles tried desperately not to think about that. He reached for the box as a distraction, and picked absently through the dry and brittle plants he’d kept. 

Tucked into the corner, behind a sachet of lavender, was a sprig of pointed leaves with red berries. Stiles frowned and picked it up, running a careful thumb over the delicate fruit. He hadn’t put it in the box. He remembered dropping the plant in surprise when the omegas showed up. He also remembered that the cutting he’d been given had two leaves. This one had three. Someone had replaced the gift. 

“It’s supposed to be the last one.” 

Stiles looked over, stunned, at Derek, who's eyes were locked on the plant in Stiles’ hand. 

“You’re supposed to give holly last. There used to be a ritual where if you accepted the wolf, you’d paint your cheeks with the juice, and if not, you’d crush them under your feet. It was messy, and old-fashioned, so werewolves just put it into bouquets now. If they bother at all.”

“You--” Stiles’ throat clicked and he coughed. “You gave me these.” 

Derek nodded, and reached a tentative plan into the box for the battered stick of thyme. The first one. 

“I had a plan,” Derek said. “I was going to wait until you were 18, then spend the time before you went to college courting you the proper way, like my parents would have wanted me to. The gifts,” his fingers went white on the stem of the herb. “They aren’t supposed to be extravagant or costly. They’re supposed to be meaningful. A token to let you know that I’m thinking of you. All the time. And it’s supposed to make you think of me. But they ruined it.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?” 

A soft, angry growl rumbled its way out of Derek’s throat. Stiles felt his hackles rise in response, but it Derek was calm again in a fraction of a second. “You were being bombarded with offers you wanted nothing to do with. I didn’t want to add to the burden, but I had to do _something_. Seeing them chase after you like that...” Derek placed the thyme in the bottom of the box with exaggerated care, then clasped his hands in a tight grip in front of him. “It drove the wolf part of me crazy.” 

Stiles let the new information sink in, holding the shoe box with numb fingers and watching Derek’s head sink lower between his shoulders in self-recrimination. With fumbling hands, he shoved the box back on the table, then punched Derek’s muscled thigh as hard as he could. From Derek’s pissy expression and the way he rubbed the place where Stiles’ hand connected, Stiles’ strength had already increased more than he thought. 

“You can stop with the guilt trip,” Stiles said. “It’s fine.” 

Derek shifted over uncomfortably, putting a few inches between them, but not getting up from the bed. “Fine? How is it fine, Stiles? I was pressuring you--” 

“No, you weren’t,” Stiles insisted. “I think I’d know if I was feeling pressured. I didn’t even notice it while it was happening, but everything you’ve been doing has been your werewolfy version of wooing, hasn’t it? The defense lessons. All the food you made me eat. The fucking fro-yo.” Stiles breathed a helpless laugh at the memory of that day as well as Derek’s current Unimpressed Eyebrows. “Well, it worked. I feel thoroughly courted. Your parents would have been proud of what a good job you did. Now, are you going to kiss me?” 

Derek was as still as statue next to him, his eyes locked on Stiles’. “You’re being serious.” 

“As a heart attack. Or, maybe an unidentified supernatural creature attack would be more appropriate for us.” Derek didn’t laugh, or smile, but his jaw took on that particular tilt that meant he was trying very hard not to find Stiles as amusing as he was exasperating. “Come on. I’m the master of deflection, you can’t avoid the question. Are you going to kiss me, or not?”

“It’s not finished.” 

“What isn’t?”

“The courting.” Derek plucked the holly berries with their verdant leaves out of the discarded box, then picked up Stiles’ hand and placed them in his palm. “Remember? You have to let everyone know if you accept me.” 

Stiles grasped a plump red berry and tugged it off its stem. The rest, he put back in the box. He held it up to the light in the sun-filled room, but it was completely opaque. 

“Aren’t holly berries poisonous?” He asked. 

“Not to werewolves.” 

Stiles squeezed the small fruit between his thumb and forefinger. A wide tear appeared in the thick skin and continuous firm pressure yielded a scant amount of nearly colourless juice. It smelled like dirt, mostly, like all plants did, even if they were also naturally perfumed. But, to their noses, the bitter, astringent scent also smelled like the trees that had been growing around it, and the weak autumn sun that had once warmed it. 

Using the berry itself as a makeshift brush, Stiles painted a single, long line up the length of his cheekbone. He could feel Derek’s gaze tracking its progress. When he was finished, and the streak started to dry, Stiles was left with the sticky pulp on his fingers. 

“Messy,” he said, as he flicked the flattened berry into the box with the rest. 

“Worth it.” Derek brought his hands up to Stiles’ jaw, tilting his face, with its loud declaration of holly, up into the light. Slowly, telegraphing his intent with every inch he leaned forward, Derek brought their lips together. 

At first, it was chaste. A press of closed mouths, then a spark of wet warmth and the barest catch of teeth. Derek allowed Stiles to lead, but he was no passive participant. He grabbed Stiles’ elbow when Stiles almost slid off the slippery sheets, and didn’t let go when Stiles crawled into his lap to kiss harder, hum louder, squeeze tighter. 

Stiles could feel the rub of Derek’s shirt against his bare chest, and knew Derek could probably smell his arousal. For himself, whenever he pulled back to gasp for air before diving back for more, he inhaled through his nose to capture the wisps of the salty, earthy smell of sweat and want. 

They pulled apart when Stiles realized he’d been rocking into Derek like he meant to go further. Stiles let his forehead rest against the sloping cushion of muscle between Derek’s neck and shoulder. Derek’s cotton-covered skin was warm, but it was still cooler than Stiles’ face felt. It took him almost by surprise to fully realize that the claw-tipped hand on Derek’s back was his own, though he wasn’t sure whose he’d expected it to be. His gums were tingling, and he was pretty sure that if the room was dark, he’d have his own headlights. 

“Stiles.” 

“Hmm. Yeah?” He said to Derek’s pectoral. His head was way too heavy to bother with picking it up. 

“We’ve got a lot of other rituals to get to.”

“Are they all as fun as that one?” 

Derek laughed, and Stiles felt the warm puff of air on his neck. “Oh, much more fun. But we can take as long as you like.” 

Stiles lifted his head and rested his brow against Derek’s. He dragged his fingernails--returned to a normal length now--up his back and settled his palms against the stubble on Derek’s cheeks. His thumb caught on a tacky patch where some of the berry juice had transferred onto Derek. 

He waited for the surprise to set in. The relief that a healthy, twenty-something werewolf who clearly found something attractive in a twitchy, skinny 18 year old would be willing to wait. But it didn’t come. He’d never, for one second, thought that they wouldn’t be holding off until Stiles gave the go ahead. 

“Thanks,” he said, anyway. 

“No problem.” 

“So, is that the pack I hear downstairs, sticking their fingers in their ears?”

“Yep.” 

“And my dad?” 

“He’s probably wondering why they’re sticking their fingers in their ears.” 

“Then I suppose we’d better go down there and stop the torture.” 

“Or not. They’ll know exactly what we were doing.” 

“True. All the more reason to go downstairs.” Stiles couldn’t wait to scar Isaac for life. He was less excited about doing the same to his dad, but it evened out. He used Derek’s shoulders to steady himself and climbed out of his lap. Derek gave him some clothes his dad had brought from their house, and he put them on while Derek explained why he was here instead of at Casa Stilinski. Short answer: Derek had a basement with chains. 

When he was decent, Stiles yanked open the door and was overpowered by the sheer number of smells and sounds coming from the house at large. He stumbled back and Derek caught him, then turned him around so that he could press his nose into his alpha’s chest. 

“Jesus,” Stiles said, weakly. “Is it always like that?”

“No. It fades after a while. Or so they tell me. I never had to get used to the difference, so I wouldn’t know. But Scott and the others will help you.” 

“They’d better.” Stiles let Derek nudge him out of the room to the top of the stairs, then he stopped and let out an agonized groan. 

“What?”

“Payback’s a bitch. I’ve got a lot of lacrosse balls to the face in my future.” 

“Hmm. Less than a week until the next full moon. You’ve got plenty to learn in a short time.” 

The grin fell from Stiles’ face, and his mood fell with it. “That is quick.” He grasped the banister in a nervous grip. “You can’t let me--”

“Stiles, don’t worry.” Derek reached for his white-knuckled hand and his fingers curled, again, around his wrist, over his speeding pulse. “You’ll be fine. You’ll have your whole pack with you.” 

Stiles breathed out, and nodded. Derek hooked his chin over Stiles’ shoulder, and with the length of his warm body pressed against him, and the sounds and scents of his pack drifting up to them, he reached for the pull of the bond and felt connected. Then, when Derek’s hand slipped down to weave their fingers together, the fragile, new spark between them flared, and Stiles felt treasured.


	11. Epilogue

Stiles skidded to a stop on the muddy bank of a feeble stream. The rest of his pack was up ahead, in various stages of undress to prepare for the full moon, which would reach its peak in just over an hour. Stiles was ready to join them. He hadn’t needed anyone to tell him to wear clothes he wouldn’t mind losing. Even the socks he had on had holes in the toes. 

He wasn’t scared. He’d thought he would be, it being his first full moon and all. But Derek trusted the control Stiles had learned in the last week, and deemed him ready to skip the chains and shackles part of his training. Of course, everyone would be watching him closely for signs that he was going off the rails, but he could feel the tug of the lunar cycle and was still solid as a rock. It was unfair, according to Erica, though she didn’t blame him. He’d simply seen enough transitions from human to wolf to pick up a few things, like remembering to breath.

It helped that he’d had an anchor long before he’d ever been bitten. He’d been spoiled for choice, really. It could have been Scott, his brother in all but blood, or his dad and his steady presence. The memories of his mom that were slowly becoming more happy than painful were definitely a frontrunner. None of them had been surprised that his wolf had latched on instead to the only alpha who ever could have turned him. 

So, he wasn’t scared. He knew he was as safe as he could be in a darkened forest, at night, in a town with a history of supernatural violence. He stopped at the edge of the stream for another reason. 

If he crossed over the water, he would officially be farther into the preserve than he’d ever been during a full moon. Gone were his days of sitting on the back porch with Lydia and Allison, waiting for sunrise for no other reason than to be close to their friends (and boyfriend) during the time that they were at their most free. If he set foot in the stream, he was no longer a spectator. He crossed a line he hadn’t crossed before, and hadn’t been sure he ever would.

Well, barring the times he’d run past it when something was chasing them. And the time Deaton had asked him to pick some mushrooms which needed to be harvested at a particular hour and date. And the time he’d gone camping with Scott in freshman year before they’d had an inkling of werewolves or any of the other clawed, fanged or tentacled creatures that lived in their world. 

It turned out, all those exceptions made the significance of passing over the stream a lot less meaningful. Stiles took the plunge without another thought, and raced to catch up with the rest. 

He rounded a jutting boulder and found Derek waiting for him, already on all fours in his alpha form. Stiles wasn’t winded at all when he slowed to a stop next to him, but his heart pounded. He looked up at the moon. It was improbably big, like a low-budget movie set. Its face was placid and unchanging, but it might as well have been a traffic light just switched to green for all that it made him want to _run_. 

He felt the brush of Derek’s fur on his leg, so he tangled his fingers into the soft, thick ruff without looking down. The tickling strands shrank and disappeared, then it wasn’t the wolf under his hand, but the man. Derek’s palm pressed into his, and their clawed fingers gripped each other. 

“Are you ready?” Derek rumbled in Stiles’ ear. Stiles could tell from the timbre of his voice that he was in beta form, so Stiles followed suit. 

“Yes.” 

They burst into movement at the same second. The trees rushed past them, and they ate up the distance of damp, packed earth beneath their feet. They didn’t have a destination in mind, but it didn’t matter. They were running, their pack was sounding off on either side of them, and the pull of the moon was as exhilarating as it was inescapable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap! Thank you so much to everyone who's followed this story the whole way along. I appreciate every comment and kudos I've ever gotten. This was something that pushed me way out of my element, so I hope you all think that I did alright. :D


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